Pints With Aquinas - The Church Abandoned Aquinas. Now We're In Crisis. (Fr. Dominic Legge) | Ep. 533

Episode Date: July 16, 2025

Fr. Dominic Legge, O.P., is the President of the Pontifical Faculty of the Immaculate Conception (PFIC) at the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C. He is an Ordinary Member of the Pontifical Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas, and holds a J.D. from Yale Law School, a Ph.L. from the School of Philosophy of The Catholic University of America, and a doctorate in Sacred Theology from the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. He entered the Order of Preachers in 2001, after having practiced constitutional law for several years as a trial attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice. He has also taught at The Catholic University of America Law School and at Providence College. He is the author of The Trinitarian Christology of St. Thomas Aquinas (Oxford University Press, 2017). 🍺 Want to Support Pints With Aquinas? 🍺 Get episodes a week early, score a free PWA beer stein, and join exclusive live streams with me! Become an annual supporter at 👉 https://mattfradd.locals.com/support 💵 Show Sponsors:  👉 Seven Weeks Coffee – Use promo code MATT for up to 25% of your first subscription order + claim your free gift: https://sevenweekscoffee.com/matt 👉  Exodus 90 – Join Exodus 90 on August 15 for St. Michael's Lent: https://exodus90.com/matt 👉  Truthly – The Catholic faith at your fingertips: https://www.truthly.ai/ 👉 Hallow – The #1 Catholic prayer app: https://hallow.com/mattfradd  💻 Follow Me on Social Media: 📌 Facebook: https://facebook.com/mattfradd 📸 Instagram: https://instagram.com/mattfradd 𝕏 Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/Pints_W_Aquinas 🎵 TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@pintswithaquinas 👕 PWA Merch – Wear the Faith! Grab your favorite PWA gear here: https://shop.pintswithaquinas.com

Pines with Aquinas is brought to you by Truthly, which is a ground-breaking Catholic AI app built to help you know, live and defend the Catholic faith. Start your seven-day free trial today when you download Truthly on the App Store. The battle for souls is not only in the heart, it's also in the mind. And truth, when people understand it, changes things. In the 20th century, there was a very intentional move away from Aquinas to say, you know, hey, we got to do something new. And I think that's produced kind of a crisis in Catholic education, in catechesis and sacramental formation, a crisis in preaching. I would point out that Aquinas has been, like, declared by the Church to be the common doctor or the universal

doctor. Like, sort of a reference point that is a really important one that can be for the whole church. People are looking for something that has substance. They're also looking for something that is authentic. Yeah, when you don't dumb the faith down intellectually or liturgically, that's when people start coming. Thank you so much for watching Pines with Aquinas. Before we get into the interview, I'd like to ask you to please consider subscribing. Over 58% of people who watch this show regularly are still not subscribed, so please do it. It's a quick, free, easy way to support the channel.

We really appreciate it. What is the weirdest question or most bizarre reaction you've had from somebody who has saw you wearing that? Oh, I was once, I did a wedding in Manhattan Beach, California and I was going to the rehearsal dinner so I parked my car around the corner from the restaurant and I was kind of walking down the block and this surfer passed me. I mean there are real surfer dudes in Manhattan Beach, and he goes, dude, awesome costume. And I said, well, actually I'm a Catholic priest,

and he was like, oh man, I'm so sorry, so sorry. It was like really heartfelt. It was like very touching. Yeah, oh, that's good. So I feel like I get that kind of reaction a lot. No one has asked about the Klan? No, not really. We've had, I mean, I've been with people, like my parents, walking around with my parents.

And then my dad kind of said to me, do you realize after you walk by how many people are looking at you, it's something that I don't see, because they're waiting until I'm past them. Yeah. But you know, I just have gotten so used to it that I don't really notice anymore. Were your parents faithful Catholics

when you became a priest? They were, yeah. I mean, I grew up in a good Catholic family. The reason I ask is I think if I became a Dominican or a Franciscan and went back home to my small town in Australia, I think that my mom or dad probably would have said, look, I don't mean to be offensive, but do you have to wear that around town? But that might be because we grew up in a small country town.

I don't know. Well, I think, you know, when I started, it was something that my parents weren't sure about, you know, especially I think my mom, it took a little more getting used to the idea. And my dad had thought about becoming a Franciscan when he was a kid. He went to a Franciscan high school. So it wasn't, you know, it wasn't as, you know, foreign an idea, I think, to him. But they live in a small town now, and when we go to the grocery store, you know, they love it because people remember me from the last

time I was there, and you know, it's a small town, so people kind of know who you are, and I celebrate Mass at the local parish and that kind of thing. If you were kicked out of the Dominican Samarro, but you had to, right, join another religious community, who would it be and why? Oh, gosh, that is a hard question. You know, I thought about, I mean, probably some kind of monastic community. I'd always been attracted to the Benedictines, you know, and loved, you know, loved, I loved going to visit Benedictine monasteries and staying with them. But, you know, it would be, one of the things that I noticed, like, before I became a Dominican,

I was visiting different religious communities and I visited a number of Benedictine monasteries and I always asked them, like, oh, where do you send your guys to go study for the priesthood? Like, where do you do your theological studies? And they would tell me and I'd be like, yeah, you know, I could see myself joining this monastery if they sent me to study there. And I realized after a while, like, you know, actually, I really want to go study theology. I really want to be in the world of the intellectual life of the church, and that's what the Dominicans are all about. So that was the natural fit for me. And so I think that would be hard, actually, if I had to step out of that world. Was it the intellectual life of the Dominicans that led you to the priesthood and to the Dominicans specifically?

Well, not exactly. I mean, yes, in part, I think. The first desire that I had to become a Dominican was like to be a preacher. It was the order of preachers. It was St. Dominic who inspired me. It wasn't first Thomas preachers. It was St. Dominic who inspired me. It wasn't first Thomas Aquinas. Interesting.

You know, so I began to study Thomas Aquinas because I was interested in becoming a Dominican. But how much do we know about St. Dominic and for it to bring you in? We don't know as much about him as, you know, the details of his biography, for example, as we do about St. Thomas, but we do know some important things. I mean, he was a preacher. He was a preacher of grace. He wanted to give his life, he wanted to pour his life out for the evangelization of souls, and so he wanted to found an order that was devoted to evangelization, basically to the preaching for the salvation of souls. And that was, you know, a very interesting combination because in the 13th century you had monasteries where you lived like a life of consecration, like a wholehearted, you know,

leaving of the world to be consecrated totally to God. And St. Dominic wanted that, but he wanted it in a way where you could also preach the gospel to the world. And so it was like moving the monastery to the city and to the university. That was St. Dominic's genius. And that was really attractive to me because I was attracted to that monastic life, but I was also attracted to like the, not like the intellectual life

in a kind of dry and academic way, but like to the fact that you can change the world, you can change people's lives through the mind, you know? Like the battle for souls is not only in the heart, it's also in the mind. And truth, when people understand it, changes things, changes things powerfully. And you know who really spoke to me very strongly about this was John Paul II. I mean, John Paul II was like the figure who first kind of spoke to my heart about the priesthood. You know, he was reading, you know what it was, he was reading his encyclical Veritatis Splendor, The Splendor of Truth.

That was the first serious moment as an adult when I thought, you know, maybe God is calling me to the priesthood. I mean, I discarded that idea. I was like, oh, I'm not, you know, no, I'm, move on, think about something else. But that was very powerful, you know, John Paul II and his witness to the truth of the faith. Can you talk about how the mendicant orders, the Dominicans and the Franciscans, arose as a response to the Albigensians and the Cathars?

And if there are others or other reasons? Yeah, yeah. Well, so, I mean, what happened is St. Dominic was traveling with his bishop through southern France, I mean, on other business, basically, assisting his bishop, and they passed through this area that was riven by this, you know, heresy of Albigensianism or Catholicism, which was like kind of a Gnostic heresy that had a lot of trappings of Christianity, but was also very different from Christianity. I mean, maybe in certain surface ways it would seem rigorous

and austere, but it was very, you know, it's like very dualistic. The body is bad, you need to be purified and you do that by like abstaining from food and drink completely. The heroes of that religion would commit suicide, you know, by like fasting, basically. And St. Dominic thought that this was a terrible, a terrible harrassment. He wanted to stay and try and preach to them and see if he could make some inroads. And that's effectively how the Dominican Order started. It was St. Dominic and then other young men around him attracted by his zeal and his personal holiness and wanted to try and live this life with him. And very early on, he sent them to the university

because they needed to be well-educated if they were going to be preaching against this heresy. So, that's, you know, how the Dominican Order really was born. And what did, tell us about our lady giving the Holy Rosary to Dominic. Yes, okay, so the, now you can talk to, I'm not a historical expert on this, and you can talk to historians who have varying, you know, varying accounts of how the Rosary came about.

When you see the image of like our lady handing St. Dominic to the rosary, like do we have historical attestation that this particular supernatural event happened? No. I mean, we don't have some kind of attestation about that. But what we do know is that Saint Dominic, there are references to him like praying with his beads, and there's also, like, early on, the Dominican devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary and wanting to spread devotion to her, so, I mean, St. Dominic through his sons, the Dominican Order, you know, and then eventually that was entrusted to the Dominican Order as a special apostolate by the Pope. So, the

fact that the Dominicans are the, you know, kind of entrusted with preaching the Rosary is a very old and traditional thing. And so to depict St. Dominic as receiving the Rosary is like a, you know, very common and traditional way to talk about that affinity between Dominicans and the Rosary. Thomas Aquinas. Let's talk about him for once in a while. Yeah. Since the show's named after him. I love Thomas Aquinas. Do you?

Yeah. I'm really glad to hear it. What is, is there an opinion that Thomas holds that you disagree with? Yeah. Yes. I mean, certainly. I mean, when you read Thomas Aquinas, you're reading a great theological master, I mean, and a saint.

So that's the first thing to start with. You know, now in any serious thinker, you can find like things where he started from the wrong premises or he had mistaken facts that he was working with. He was working with, for example, the best scientific understanding that you could have in the 13th century. And, you know, it just means that sometimes that wasn't

adequate to things that we know now in terms of the science. For example, the science of, you know, embryology and embryo development. We've learned a lot about how that works, and St. Thomas was working with the best science that he had in his time. So, if he's drawing conclusions based on, like, mistaken medieval premises, you know, I don't have a problem looking at that and saying, well, you know, if St. Thomas were, if he had access to the information that we have access to, he surely wouldn't be describing things this way. He would be doing it a different way. But I think St. Thomas has a

special genius, and his genius was to understand the whole. And, you know, this is what he says, is the role of the wise person. The wise person, what makes a wise person wise? It's grasping the whole and then how everything fits into the whole. So Aquinas had an amazing capacity. I think this is his true genius. Not so much to be super original in all the things that he says. In fact, a lot of the things that he says are not as original as you might think. He's getting them from other places.

But he understood like the whole of Christian theology and like with all of philosophy and he could then encounter some new ideas and see how they can be, like, adapted and fit into the whole in a way that made him a master of synthesis. And that's why his great work, which is the Summa Theologiae, is a work of summary and synthesis. That's what makes it so great. So, like, you can, if you go through the whole Summa, which is a big job, but if you go through the whole Summa, you do cover the whole of theology. And you know, he was able to do that in the 13th century in a way that today is very,

very difficult to do, because every, you know, all of our academic disciplines have become so segmented and specialized. But he, like, he was able to do everything. So that he gets a few things wrong is not a big deal because the big picture is profoundly right. Yeah, it would be weird if you expected a saint to get everything right. A saint is a declaration by the church that an individual is in heaven, not that they were inerrant. That's right. Now, at the same time, I would point out that Aquinas has been, like, declared by the church to be the common doctor or the universal time, I would point out that Aquinas has been like declared by the church to be

the common doctor or the universal doctor, like sort of a reference point that is a really important one that can be for like the whole church. And I think that's important. And you know, I'm the director of the Thomistic Institute. That's what we're devoting, you know, devoting all of our work and energy to, is to like making Aquinas accessible to people and to helping them encounter the riches of the Catholic intellectual tradition. And Aquinas is like one of the greatest figures

that makes that tradition accessible to us. But why is Aquinas so important? Well, I mean, in the history of the church, like go back 400 years, 500 years, Aquinas has always been kind of a guiding star, like a north star for Catholic doctrine. And in a certain way, I would say, like providing kind of a structure for Catholic thought.

So Aquinas, because he's like a common reference point, it's kind of like a skeleton, like a backbone. It doesn't have all the flesh on it necessarily, so you need more stuff than just Aquinas, but if you have Aquinas, it kind of helps all the parts fit together. In the 20th century, there was a very intentional move away from Aquinas to say, you know, hey, we got to do something new. And so... Look at how that played out. Yeah, we tried that. And I'm not sure that we found another skeletal structure. In fact, I think what we ended up with

was something that didn't, like, individual parts are still excellent, but it's harder to see how it all fits together. And I think that's produced kind of a crisis in Catholic education, in crisis in catechesis and sacramental formation, a crisis in preaching, because you kind of need to be able to understand the whole and how it all fits together so that you can, like, present it to people in a way that they can understand and that they kind of see the big picture while still being able to zoom in on individual things. So I think that's part of the mission of the Thomistic Institute is to try and, like, say, hey, guys, Aquinas is really important.

How is it working out without him, him like structuring the way we think? Like Catholic theology, Catholic dogma, the church's magisterium, all the way down to like your first grade, you know, or your first communion class, like you need some structure there, and Aquinas gives us the principles that let us do that. I like to think of the Dominicans as sort of the revenge of the nerds,

and I mean that very affectionately because it seemed like after the new atheism phase that seems to have completely died out at this point, you've got excellent people coming to our defense like Dr. William Lane Craig and others. But then y'all maybe with less of the, I don't know, fame and clout as Craig, kind of started invading these universities and just taught domestic truths that it seems like a lot of people were and are resonating with. So what is the response on these campuses? Because you're not there to like make Christianity look cool. You know, you're there to teach metaphysical truths and moral truths. What's the response

been all over the world? The response has been amazing. I mean, how did these campus chapters, I mean, just to describe briefly what we do, we have student clubs, effectively, on university campuses, and we just, actually actually we just celebrated our 100th chapter so we just had the the formation and the first event for our 100th chapter so that's a huge milestone for us. We only started eight years ago so to get from zero to 100 in eight years well that took a lot of work but it's really the work of all these students. So it's a club of students who form a group, they apply for recognition from their university, and then they reach out to us,

and we help them bring Catholic speakers to their campus and put on Catholic events, and then have reading groups and social events, and we try to bring them to the Dominican House of Studies for retreats, and we have summer conferences for them. And we were very pleased that last year at our summer conference we had the Matt Fradd from Pints with Aquinas as one of our keynote speakers.

That was a huge privilege. So I mean, I know that you've seen some of these students and met them, but the secret sauce to all of this are the students. And it's the fact that we wanted this to not be pre-programmed from like the Dominican House of Studies in Washington, D.C., but to say to the students, like, you are the Thomistic Institute, you are in charge of your chapter, what interests you? What

do you think the students at your campus are, like, would like to hear about? What do you, what are your questions? And then, you know, we try to find speakers who can answer those questions. I mean, how do you, I mean, you've got a hundred chapters, how many speaking engagements do these chapters get a month? Is it one a month or? We would like it to be one a month. I mean, some of our most active chapters

would have say eight lectures in an academic year, which is roughly one a month. And then we have seminars on top of that. That's a lot of speakers. Not all of our chapters have that many events. So we're trying to get them all up to that level. But I mean, this year, we're gonna be around 500 lectures this year.

So who's organizing these speaking engagements? The groups on campus? Yes. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah, so basically this is an army of student volunteers who is doing this work. And do you have a list of pre-approved speakers that they can choose from? Yeah, basically we

have speakers that we have, you know, that we know and we know that they're, you know, solid Catholic, you know, gonna get solid Catholic or Christian. We have a few Protestant speakers on the list. So it's not, you know, we're, we have chapters that are run at non-Catholic schools, you know, we have chapters that are run at non-Catholic schools, you know, Protestant schools. We have chapter presidents who are not Catholic. Some are Protestant, some are Orthodox. We have some who are not even Christian,

who are involved in the clubs. So you don't have to be Catholic to be involved. You just have to like the ideas and wanna hear about them. And so it's very different from, say, a campus ministry, because a campus ministry is, like, trying to care for the souls of the Catholic students primarily, and hopefully also bring in, you know, and expose non-Catholics to the britches of the faith. But what we're trying to do is reach out to the university on the intellectual level and help people at the university see that like these ideas are very serious ideas that any educated person should know something about and wouldn't you like to

know something about them. So you know we're trying to supplement the life of the university with this tradition which typically is not well represented on you know the contemporary secular campus. What is a campus that you're surprised the Thomiskey Institute has grown so much? Well, I mean, the great story here would be Regent University. Regent is in Virginia Beach.

It was founded by Pat Robertson. It's a evangelical college or university. And the vast majority of students there are not Catholic, but they have been incredibly interested. There's a group of Catholic and Protestant students together who formed a Thomistic Institute chapter. They're getting like 170 people at each lecture, if you can believe that.

They decided to publish a journal, you know? It's like unbelievably active and engaged. And then we've got a group, you know, these are groups of students, some Protestant, some Catholic coming to the Dominican House of Studies on retreat. And at a retreat that we run, it includes like, okay, we pray Vespers, that's praying the Psalms,

but we go to Mass and we do Eucharistic Adoration. And like, all these students are doing that together. And that is amazing. So, I don't, you know, I never imagined that that would happen, but it's happening. Yeah, when you don't dumb the faith down intellectually or liturgically, that's when people start coming. That's right, and I think people are looking for something that has substance. They're also looking for something that is authentic, you know, I think that's a big, for something that is authentic, you know, I think that's a big, I don't know, big warning sign to young people if they think that you're not real. And so we don't try to be too fancy, but we do try to be who we are, you know. Have you had any negative experiences on campuses? Have any of these lecturers gone on

to say things that would say go against secular dogma, if you want to put it that way, and they've received any pushback? We've been pretty fortunate about that. We've had, I mean, there have been a few cases, yeah. But for the most part, we have not had that problem. And I think the reason is, we have tried to keep the focus, we say to the student part, we have not had that problem. And I think the reason is we have tried to keep the folks, we say to the student leaders, for example, we don't do politics, we don't do journalism. Like we don't invite politicians, we don't have journalists come and speak.

Like the popular kind of, I don't know, more rabble rouser type events, which, you know, it's nothing against them, it's just not what we do. I love it. And so, we want to be a reputable partner intellectually, but we don't want to flinch from the truths of the faith. So we want to be straightforward about that.

I mean, if I walk onto a college campus, even a very secular one, in my habit, people know where you stand, you know. There's no one's deceived about what you believe, but you don't always have to lead with the most difficult things. So, for example, we generally don't lead with stuff dealing with human sexuality or the Sixth Commandment. It's not because we don't believe in that stuff. We absolutely do. I mean, it's actually extremely important. It's just that if you lead with that on a college campus,

you're like poking the most neurologic spot, you know, the most sensitive spot. And you can get further if you start by talking about, I mean, what we say is like, who on campus is talking about God? Why don't we talk about God? Who on campus is talking about happiness or faith or virtue or like, is the Bible really true?

Or can you reconcile scripture and science? I mean, these are really important questions. They're super interesting questions. People are really interested in them, and if you get off on a political theme or something that is like the hottest debate of the day on campus, you may not ever get to the stuff that you really want to talk about. I mean, that's good advice for one-on-one evangelization as well, right? Prudence, that virtue which helps us act in a

call with right reason, should help us as we evangelize our mother-in-law or our brother who might be away from the church. And you can be kind of morally certain that if I bring this particular topic up right now, it'll just make her or him angry. And okay, what's the good in that? You get to feel like you said the truth even though they didn't want to hear it. Yeah, but the goal is to help them hear it. And so you're kind of getting in the way. That's right. I mean, you know, this is good pastoral sense, you know, having good pastoral sense. You want to say the truth and you don't want to back off. You don't want to be afraid of saying the truth or pretend like you don't believe it. That would not be truthful and it wouldn't be it wouldn't really be helping the person you're talking to. But you don't have to start with the most

difficult point. And you have to build a rapport and a kind of a relationship of intellectual communion and even trust, you know? So if you become a responsible partner in an argument or a dialogue, then you can eventually get to the more difficult things. I mean, the goal is not to never get there. It's just you don't necessarily start there. Yeah, I know that makes sense. Did you find that when y'all began eight years ago, you said, were you getting a lot more requests to speak on arguments of the existence of God, whereas today something else is being requested more?

Yeah, I mean, we initially started with like, you know, like, let's just do Aquinas 101. You know, let's just like introduce the thought of Aquinas. But what we discovered is that people were also very interested in, like, the science and faith kind of topics, very very interesting. Other things like neuroscience and the soul or neuroscience and virtue. These are really interesting topics to people. I want to tell you about some amazing coffee we were sent recently. It was from Seven Weeks Coffee, which is America's pro-life coffee company. They are on a mission to

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checks all the boxes. So go to 7weekscoffee.com and save 15% forever when you subscribe, plus exclusively for my listeners use the promo code Matt for an extra 10% off your first order. That's a 25% total savings on your first order plus your free gift. Remember your order will directly help support a network of over a thousand pro-life organizations across the U.S. 7weekscoffee.com. Things that have to do with literature and the faith, you know, also Catholic spirituality, maybe you could have predicted that, you know, that. But if you look at our most requested

talks, you know, like the neuroscience talks are among the most requested. Why is that? Well, I think it's because it's a question that people have. You know, it's like a, it's a discipline that's growing a lot. A lot of students are interested in it. It seems like if you wanna like go full into neuroscience,

you have to give up on the idea that you have a soul or that you're really free or that you, like you're not determined by your brain states or something like that. So that's, you know, interesting. Thomas Aquinas and happiness. I taught a little bit on this in Austria last year. I got to read his commentary on the Beatitudes. It was glorious. And then of course what he has to say about those different things we turn to to make us happy that can't work. Aristotle and Aquinas, what is happiness? Yeah, well happiness is like achieving what you desire, like reaching what you desire in a certain

way. You know, so it's related to our desires. This is, you know, Aristotle would say like, if you are still hungering for something that you don't have, are you perfectly happy? And the answer is, well, no, you're still missing something. So what would it mean for you to be like completely fulfilled? And that also has an aspect of, like, perfection. What if I hunger for things I shouldn't or that degrade me?

Yeah, well, of course, that's the problem that every human being has after sin, you know. We have disorder in us. Aquinas has a really interesting explanation of, like, where that comes from and, like, what's going on with that. And he talks about like the sin of our first parents. So, he says, well, you know, human beings were created in grace, in the garden, you know. So, if we use the biblical, you know, the biblical text and talk about Adam and Eve, you know, you have this original couple in perfect harmony with God, in perfect harmony with the world around them, and perfect harmony within them, like their mind and their body is integrated, their passions

respect the judgment of their mind, they don't have disorder desires, they are also not going to die, that's a gift of grace, you know, because of the dignity of their soul. Okay, so what happens when they sin? Their minds rebel against God by choosing to do what they know is wrong, and as a result, the lower parts of them begin to rebel against their mind. So that's Aquinas' analysis of what we inherit. We inherit a body that doesn't want to listen. Oh, it's so good. And it's St. Paul's, I do the things, what is it that I don't want to do? Yes, that's right.

Or the things I don't want to do I end up doing, who will save me from this body of death? That's right. Well, and this is why, like, when you think about the experience of conversion or forgiveness, or like when grace frees you from that condition, you know, maybe only for a time, or maybe in a certain zone of your life. But when you, you know, what is it like psychologically, like your own personal experience of knowing what the right thing is and having a war inside you about whether you can do the right thing

or whether you're going to do the wrong thing. And you know that you shouldn't do the wrong thing, but a part of you wants to do it. But that makes you actually unhappy, especially the more aware you are that it's the wrong thing. It's like really painful experience. So it's like your will is divided against yourself. And then you can have these amazing experiences where God, by His grace, frees you from those disordered desires and your heart becomes unified, maybe only for a time. But I mean, the experience of that interior unification, that you can let go of those unworthy desires, and you realize that they don't control you anymore, and you can leave them behind. That is the experience of freedom.

Golly, I just had a conversation with a friend this morning, and he said that last night, him and his wife just had this moment of grace where they were talking to each other about how much they love their family and children, and they both were in tears, repenting to each other about how much they love their family and children and they both were in tears repenting to each other again for having fornicated prior to marriage. And this was this very beautiful experience and it just seems obvious that they would be much more miserable if they had never have ceased that fornication, had never got on with what the church taught was appropriate. And when you're not able, not only do you begin to follow the law, but you want to follow

the law, as you say, it's freedom and it's joy and it's beauty. So what seems so unattractive to Matt Fradd when I was 15 years old and just wanted to fornicate and look at porn and smoke drugs, I don't know what I wanted to do, all sorts of things, lie and deceive people and things like that. As I find that not only am I not doing those things, but as my desire to not do those things has evaporated, there's just more peace, there's less war. I mean, there's still war, but there's less war, and that's a much better place to be in. Yeah, I mean, it's an amazing and beautiful truth, and when you experience it, you know, you say, well, my life is changing.

And where does that come from? It comes from God. How do you account though for secular atheist people who know exactly what we're talking about? They've had this exact same experience. Well, it doesn't mean that God is in dead work in their lives. So I would say God can be at work in their lives.

He probably is. Does it have to be God? I know we're not Pelagian, so we can talk about that. Yeah, well. Can it be just their own natural realization? Like, you know, like Socrates and Plato and realizing apart from God's revelation, that to act one way is to become unhappy

and to act another way is to become more content. Oh yeah, absolutely. So, I mean, there's a long tradition about this. It's called virtue, you know, right? Natural virtue. So, you don't have to be religious to have some virtues. You don't have to be Catholic to have virtues. Aristotle wrote beautifully about virtue, Plato, you know, there's a long ancient, you know, tradition in the ancient world, the ancient pagan world about virtue, and when you acquire virtue, you acquire self-mastery. So, and that it orders you to your natural happiness. So, like, you can acquire temperance so that

you can regulate your appetites for food and for pleasure and for sex and all of those other things. Like, you can do that. It's hard to do without the help of grace, and it requires like good beginnings and a lot of, you know, a lot of care and a lot of like moral formation and moral effort, but you can really make progress. So you can make progress without God's grace in growing in virtue? Yeah, I think that's definitely true. What would you not be able to achieve without God's grace? You would not be able to order yourself back to God as an adopted son or daughter. So we can achieve human good things without grace. This is actually, Aquinas has a famous

article in the Summa where he asks, can someone without grace do any good? And you might be kind of tempted to say no, no, you can't do any good at all without grace, and without, like, you're just totally a sinner and everything you do is nothing but sin. And that actually is kind of like a hard Augustinian position. Also, like, often you hear that from some Protestant, you know, some Protestant approaches. It's like total depravity. Human nature is so depraved you can't do anything at all that's good. But Aquinas is more balanced than that, and he says, no, you can do some good.

You cannot do something that is making you, like, on the way to heaven, but you can do lots of humanly good things. You can build a business and feed your family and acquire the virtue of natural justice and natural temperance. Be courageous in battle. You can be courageous in battle. You can do all kinds of good things.

Like you can acquire human prudence. You can, like, you can be a friend. You can be a friend to other people and help other people and be generous to them. Like all those things. You can be grateful to your benefactors, but you aren't going to be pleasing in God's eyes, and you're not going to be headed towards heaven in the sense that, like, starting to live a supernatural life. And so... What's the phenomenological experience of living the supernatural life? Because

we all know that there are atheists who seem to be more in control of their passions than Catholics. So is that like a felt experience that Christians have as they receive the grace of God, or what? That's a great question, because the answer is, yeah, there's not any guarantee that you'll feel it. So, Aquinas also asks this question. Sorry to sound like a broken record, but this is Pints with Aquinas after all. So, I'm going to try and bring him in. No, we need to make up for like three years of not talking about Aquinas. Yeah, okay. So, Aquinas says, like, do you, can you tell if you're in the state of grace?

Yeah. And he says, well, you cannot know with certitude. You can only kind of make a probable judgment by looking at, like, the things you take delight in. If you take delight in spending time with God, if you take delight in prayer, if you take delight in thinking about the things of God, if you try to, like, orient your life towards the higher things, then that's a pretty good sign that you're in a state of grace. But it's not a guarantee, because grace is in the highest part of the soul, and it's about you receiving the gift of faith, hope, and love or charity. So, those things don't, because they're in the most spiritual part of the soul, you don't necessarily feel them.

And this is also like very good practical spiritual advice that some people get caught up on, like they judge their spiritual lives by how they're feeling. And okay, sometimes like being forgiven, you feel something, and it might even be very profound. But it's not necessarily the case that you will feel something every time. And if you're chasing after these emotions, the emotion of feeling peace or feeling loved or feeling, I don't know, ecstatic about God, then you are chasing something that isn't God, because God is beyond what we can see or hear or feel, and that's like what we want to aim at is actually union with Him, which is more elevated than any of our feelings. So, feelings are an unreliable guide to our spiritual lives. They're not totally, you know, they're not always totally wrong, but they're sometimes

wrong. So you have to judge with your mind and not with your feelings. Ludwig Ott, Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma, and the sixth session at the Council of Trent on Justification. dogma and the sixth session at the Council of Trent on justification. Both don't, you know, and then of course Ott is elucidating Trent. Trent doesn't say we can't have a guarantee of our salvation, just that it can't be infallible, that we can have a moral sense. Kind of like I think what you're saying with Thomas Aquinas, right? Yeah, I think that's right.

It's actually what it says in Trent, if I'm not mistaken, is except for a private revelation or something like we can't have absolute certainty. And that's exactly, that's taken from Thomas Aquinas. Okay. So how then does the regular Christian not walk, well, why is that the case? And then how does the regular Christian not walk around in continual terror that he may be damned? regular Christian not walk around in continual terror that he may be damned? Well, so, two things. One, the Christian life, like the life of the theological virtues, supernatural life with, you know, with God, is, it's something that is above the level of our, even our, you know, our bodies, our feelings, our psychology, our memory, our imagination. It's operating on the

highest part of the soul. So, what's the highest part of the soul? Intellect and will. So, it's like your mind directing itself to like to know God by faith, you know, to believe what He says and to love Him, which doesn't always mean you feel it. You know, and this is also true about human relationships. You know, human this is also true about human relationships. You know, human relationships in this, I think that's not a bad analogy to say like, okay, you know, you've been dating someone for a long time, maybe you're married to someone, and do you say,

well, I don't feel it today, therefore I'm not in love, or therefore our love has died? Well, that would be a huge mistake, because what is the highest form of love is an act of your will. It's a spiritual act of your will, which is not necessarily connected to your emotions. And sometimes when your emotions are not there, you have to say, I'm not listening to my emotions right now. Like, I am going to do what my mind tells me is the right thing, and I am going to like say to my spouse, I love you, even though I'm not feeling it right now.

And making that act of love is act, that is really an act of love. It doesn't mean that you never want the emotions to be there, of course it's better when the emotions are supporting that act. But it's not the same. No, and we see that when you might hear somebody say like, I just, I missed that kind of initial connection

I have with somebody and they go from relationship to relationship to relationship, seeking not love, not the good of the other, not the other for themselves, but just it's a way to objectify the other person because from this new partner, I will get that immediate feeling that I found so pleasurable. Well, you know, there's a beautiful spiritual tradition in the Carmelites, you know, the dark night of the soul,

and people sometimes get like, whoa, they're very interested in that subject, but it's related to this, because what is the dark night? It is leaving behind everything lower and seeing that if you want to be united to God, you have to leave behind everything earthly, united to God, you have to leave behind everything earthly, everything merely human. You have to go by faith and love into something that seems to you like it's dark. Now it isn't actually dark, but it's dark to us because of our weakness and because we're operating usually on such a low level that it feels like we're leaving behind everything that is familiar to us, all those emotional and psychological supports. And what John of the Cross and Teresa of Avila are saying we have to do is

you have to live into, like, you have to live into that faith. And faith has a certain darkness to it. Why? Not because it's dark of itself, but because it goes beyond what our minds are used to seeing. Our minds like to see, like, through our bodily senses. You cannot access God that way. You have to access God by something higher. So He gives you the light of faith. It is really actually, it's a brilliantly intelligible light, but it can seem dark to us because our minds are used to like getting more traction on things through our senses and through the normal, you know, ratio-senation, the normal workings of our mind.

But when you're operating on the highest level of faith, you don't always have that. You just have to believe what God is speaking to you. And that can be hard. But that is, in fact, I think, what they're describing. I'm thinking of that line from John of the Cross. I forget the poem, he who is sick with love, whom God himself has touched, finds his taste so change, that they fade away like a fevered man who loathes any food he sees and desires I know not what which is so gladly found." Exactly. The nada, no sonata. That's right, so it's not, I mean, John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila, they are profoundly Thomistic, actually. They

were formed in Thomas Aquinas. Now, it's done in a more poetic way and with a lot of spiritual sensitivity. And so there's like, they're using these... They're like the melancholic nodes. Yeah, well, that's right. But they are expressing something profoundly true, and it's related to the fact that God is so much higher than we are. And so in order to approach God, we have to go through a process of serious purification, and that purification can feel like you're leaving behind everything that is familiar

and you're going into the darkness. But in fact, once you get there, it is not dark. It is actually brilliantly alive and light, and this is the union that they talk about. I mean, the goal is not to just go into the darkness. The goal is to leave behind everything that is unworthy so that you can have that union with God who is perfect. Just like the goal of fasting isn't starvation, but feasting. That's right. Yeah. All right. I began by asking you, and I think you began to answer it, but I want you to take another swing at it because I'm still not clear on this. Why can't a Christian have certitude of his, whether or not he's in the state of grace, and if he cannot have

that, why shouldn't every Christian walk around in constant terror of hell? So when Aquinas answers this question, I, you know, I would love to pull out the text and we can go through it together, but the... I have to know, I would love to pull out the text and we can go through it together, but the— I have to assume it, yeah. Okay, well, if you want to do that, you just let me know. The text actually makes the very point we were just talking about, which is it has to do with the fact that God is so much higher than us. And so our union with God is not something that our minds have direct visual access to.

So you only can entrust yourself to God, and it's something that is not directly in your control. So, this is the virtue of hope. You know, the virtue of hope is to hear God's promise to you and to believe it and trust in it. You know, so believing it is faith, trusting in it is with, you know, an act of will to entrust yourself to God and trust His promises because He is good. And so, do you have it yourself? Like, do you see it? No, you don't see it, but you believe it and you trust it, which is to hope in God. Okay, so your point might even be intelligible or acceptable to the Protestant who thinks maybe he believes the Calvinist heresy of one saved always saved. He might even agree with you the way you've formulated that, because it's not immediately

present to me, but I trust in the goodness of God that he'll bring it about. That's right. Now, of course, yes, that's true. Now, the Aquinas would add, you know, as long as we're in this life, we can fail. Right. So that would be maybe the point of difference. Yeah. All right. Because it sounds like you're saying, because God is so much higher than us, we can't have that immediate sense that we're in right relationship with him. I boil it down, maybe. sense that we're in right relationship with him. I boil it down, maybe. But you would say that we can know and assent the Word of God and know with certainty that the Word of God is true. That's right. But surely that's high above us, so why can't I have certainty of my

current state of grace the way I can have in the Word of God, even though both are above me. Well, you could if it was revealed to you in the same way that the Word of God is revealed to you. I mean, the Word of God is like a public revelation, but you being in a state of grace is not a public revelation. Okay, two things. Here's why I think we can't have certainty of our salvation in the same way we can have certainty that God's Word is what it says it is and that it's from God. Number one would be we can deceive ourselves, and we're not very good at detecting our own self-deception, but we're usually pretty good at seeing when other people tend to be deceiving themselves. I think a lot of us have had an experience where we've met someone who claims to be a Christian, but they act in a way that seems contrary to the law of God, and we wonder how it is they don't seem to see that. Okay?

Secondly, because we can apostatize, and we can reject God's gift of salvation. Is there another reason? That seems to be the only two reasons I can think of. That we can't have certainty that we're in a state of grace. Well, I think when— Because baptism certainly brings us into a salvific relationship with Christ. That's right. I mean, so Aquinas thinks that you have a probable knowledge that you're in a state of grace, and it can be pretty strong judgment, but it's not the same as certitude, which you would have by a scientific demonstration, for example, like a logical proof.

So you can be more and more, you know, more and more confident of it as your life goes on and, you know, as you see those probable signs, like, adding up. But I think what he's saying is that to know that you're in a state of grace requires you to, like, have more access to, like, the fact that, like, God is dwelling in your soul, then we're capable of having. Yeah, all right. That all, that makes sense to me, and yet it seems to me that, I mean, I've read Thomas on confession, and he seems to say that if you confess, you obviously need to bring everything. I think he uses the analogy of a sick patient revealing himself to the doctor.

But that if one forgets to confess something, one is still forgiven within the sacrament of confession. So it seems to me that if I go to confession and I don't intentionally withhold a mortal sin, then I'm completely forgiven. That's right. So at that moment, why can't I have certitude that I'm saved? I think, you know, or certitude that you're in a state of grace, you know, if we put it that way,

because that's the technical, I mean, I think what you have is you have a, you have the sacramental promise of God in that. And I mean, I agree with you, there's no reason to doubt it. I'm not saying, like, if you lack certitude, then you're in a state of doubt or something like that. You rightly hope in God and repose all of your trust in Him. I've been thinking lately about how sometimes the question, the kind of obsession with, am I saved, is a godless question, because it's about me and it's not about Him. So I'm going to tell you how I think about myself right now, and you tell me if it's heresy. I am confident that Christ is making me a saint, and I have no fear of my damnation,

because all of my trust is Him, in Him, I hope. And even if it isn't, I surrender that to the good Jesus, and that all of my strength is weakness So I got nothing and so I trust that the one who has begun a good work in me will bring it to completion And that he loves me and that he he desires me to be saved and I put my trust in him And I try not to sin and when I do I repent of it and so I'm confident my salvation Yeah, the heresy not sounds good to me good. Yeah, I would I would put it the same way Yeah, so I put it the same way. Yeah.

So I think that's very balanced. I think there's a, I dealt with scrupulosity a lot and it wrecked me. And what I found was when I was in that space, it made me a much worse person, a worse Christian, because it became sort of solipsistic in a way, navel gazing. Whereas when I just sort of went, oh my gosh, Christ is my salvation and he's a mountain and I'm standing on him. And so long as I don't jump off of this mountain,

I can be confident. That's right. That what he's begun, he'll bring to completion. Yeah. Once that sunk in, and I would say that that wound of scrupulosity, and I think we should distinguish, I don't know what you think,

between scrupulosity and a tender conscience. A tender conscience is good, and we ought to have it. Scrupulosity is not good, and I think it's something that needs to be rebuked, renounced actually. But that wound of scrupulosity, I would say, was healed by Trent, by Thérèse of Lisieux, by focusing on the confidence we can have in him. And that confidence, I think some people might look at that and go, well, that would lead you to be somehow lax-y-daisy in the spiritual life. But I think the opposite's

true, because I think that if I am confident in him and I love him as my father, then I don't want to disappoint him and I trust in his grace. I'm less agitated, I'm not trying to fix everything myself like a Pelagian might. So that's on the positive. Whereas if I am kind of thinking I'm going to get all of my stuff together here, and I think I do, then I don't need God. I'm just like, yeah, I either fall into despair or I fall into presumption. Yeah, can I build on that? Because I think, you know, sometimes we think about, you know, as Catholics, okay, state of grace, if you commit a mortal sin, you lose it, like you kill the life of the soul, and so it seems like it's

very fragile, you know, like if I make one mistake, then it's all over. And so that can lead people to be like constantly worried about it. And okay, there's a truth there that if you commit a mortal sin, you do lose the grace of the soul. But at the same time, grace is very powerful. It is not like a hothouse flower that has to be like protected and kept in the greenhouse all the time. It is actually meant to grow into a massive oak tree, right? So it's like really, really strong and it can completely change your life and give you a capacity to go upwards that you would never have had before,

that you never imagined you could have. And so it can, like when it really gets rooted in you and grows, it's super powerful. So if you begin living in that life of grace and you're going from like from good to better, the longer you persevere in that grace, you know, it's not a guarantee that you will never fall because as long as we're in this life,

we can turn away from God because that's just, you know, the possibility of, you know, it's like the awful possibility of this life that we can refuse. But at the same time, it's less and less intelligible that you would ever do that. Like it's less and less intelligible that you would ever do that. Like, it makes less and less sense. When you have started to live your life towards God in a way that, like, more and more of

your life is focused on Him and, you know, like, you're living your life more deeply in the sacraments and more deeply in the life of the church and, you know, it becomes the kind of thing that you're less and less likely to betray. Much in the same way, I think, that, you know, like the love for a friend can grow. And then, you know, like the idea that I would betray my friend is like, what are you talking about? I would never do that to him. I would never want to hurt him. Right, that's good. I like that.

And yet certain grave sins can almost feel reactionary. Like I was speaking to someone recently and they had been free of looking at pornography and self abuse for, I think they said a year, and then they screwed up. And he went to confession, and he was desperately trying to rack his brain as to what this could mean, where this came from, and the priest said to him,

don't worry, we are idiots who are easily distracted. That's all, that's enough, just repent, and I thought that was good advice. But so, I guess to use that analogy, like with the friend, what would I do to betray my friend? So it's like, according to church teaching, it's a grave sin to commit a sexual sin. But that's actually kind of easy, and it can feel kind of impulsive. That's different to say apostasy, because that would seem to me to be- Yeah, apostasy is more grave, it's more spiritual.

Right, because it would seem to be like betraying your friend and apostasy are more analogous than betraying your friend and committing self abuse because you attempted and didn't think it through and here you go. The analogy to friendship with the self abuse, again, provided it was whatever, spontaneous or somewhat like that, you know, would be more like accidentally speaking ill of your friend to

someone else. Yeah, or I don't know. I mean, if you want to use an example of like a bodily appetite, it's like, you know, you, your birthday cake is in the fridge and I'm like, you know, I'm, I just can't resist, I'm going to eat, I'm going to eat his cake. And then you're like, oh man, why did I do that? I shouldn't have done that. You know, like that was selfish of me and I wasn't thinking of him. I was hungry, I was stupid. But you know, so I think maybe there's some kind of analogy there with what we're talking about. Because the spiritual sin of malice is much worse.

Yeah, I want to make it clear that I'm not trying to downplay the seriousness of sexual sin. I'm just saying that it is a bodily sin, like the cake analogy, but it holds a lot more shame for people. Why is that? Well, when Aquinas talks about that, he says because it's very, you know, it's like the lowest part of us, you know, it's closer to lowest part of us, you know, it's closer to the animals. Oh, wow. You know?

So we become like a beast. We're becoming more animal-like. Interesting. And that is shameful for us because we know that we should be more than that. And then conversely, we tend to take pride in our spiritual sins. Yeah. We can become puffed up as we become more envious and arrogant.

I think it's actually really helpful to think about the fact that we are rational animals. We are animals. We actually are animals. So we have a lot in common with animals. That's great. And that's really freeing. So, you know, like you look at, I don't know,

how do dogs behave with each other in a pack, or, you know, like you look at, I don't know, how do dogs behave with each other in a pack, or, you know, like gorillas behave with each other, and they're like thumping their chest, and, you know, and we do things like that all the time. And so, it's not always like the highest part of us that's doing those things. It's like kind of animal behavior. But the goal is for us to like regulate our animal lives with our minds, which are the highest part of us. And that's what sin makes very difficult because our animal lives are very disordered and they often take over. So we, like growing in the ability of our mind to govern your animal life is really good. And that comes out especially in lust. But it's true in lots of other areas

too. It can be pride. I mean, you think about human relationships and like, oh, listen, I really want to be the top dog. I want to be the most important person in the room. Like when I walk, like you need to get out of my way. And that's like, that's animal dominant, you know, dominant behavior. And it's, it's not what we're made for. I remember the one takeaway I have from Interior Castle was humility, heaven. Not humility, hell. Like that humility is everything. Yeah. Okay, I can know whether I'm committing, you know, self abuse.

I can know that. Can I know if I'm humble? And how do we strive to grow in humility? What does that fight even look like? Because I could see myself congratulating myself for what a humble thing it is I just did and then spoiling it all. Yeah, of course. Well, you know, there's the famous line, I think it's from Augustine, that, you know, pride is the this unique vice that even our, you know, pride is this unique vice that even our spiritually good acts can be the reason that we become prideful, you know. So it's like it can poison everything. So, yeah, that's really

hard. We are not naturally humble because of the effects of original sin in us. So it requires a constant, it's a constant struggle, but humility is also honesty. I mean, Aquinas talks about it that way. So it's not like just self abasement or pretending that you're not something, but it's being honest about who you really are. And I think this is where like the Carmelites have very beautiful

advice about, like, standing before God. Also, Catherine of Siena. Catherine of Siena has this beautiful line, you're probably familiar with it, like, in her dialogue, God is speaking to her and says to her, I am he who is, you are she who is not. And that is the basis for humility. What does that mean? Well, compared to God, we are relatively nothing. Right. So like we... Because we're dependent, is that what?

Yeah, exactly. So like to understand that we are creatures is a really great step towards humility. Because we have to be aware that before God, we're nothing. God is everything. And we only have, like, the only goodness that I have really in the end is coming from God, either because of the nature He's given me or because of the grace, you know, that He's infused into

me. And so, there's no reason that I can boast because in the end it's all from Him. Okay. And so, how would this play into what we said earlier about the pagan with his or her natural virtues? Yeah, well, of course, you know nature is founded on creation Yeah, so, you know if even you know, even the pagans were able to recognize that, you know There has to be a first mover for example, who is above us But humility wasn't like wasn't the pagan strong suit, you know. So was that emphasized by any?

Well, you know, so this is like, this is like something that, you know, if you if you take a class on Aristotle's, Nickomachean ethics, everyone always talks about like, the hero there is the magnanimous man, but who comes across can be kind of depicted as kind of like a prideful person. So Christianity really changes the focus on that. Yeah, I think it was Lewis, maybe in mere Christianity, who says it's that vice that we find most detestable in other people but almost never see in ourselves. Yeah, that's right. You meet someone who's arrogant, they're way more disgusting or off-putting to you than

if they were maybe lustful or greedy or avarice or something like that. You wouldn't appreciate those things but if someone's prideful, yeah. And I mean part of that might be because it gets in the way of my own ego and it's kind of crowding me out and I don't appreciate that but part of it is just it's very, I don't know, ugly things are unnatural, and unnatural things are repulsive. That's right. Yeah, I mean, I think often some of that pridefulness comes out of a kind of, well, I think you often see it in people who have a lack of self-confidence, you know, like they need to kind of prove their worth. And also like being rooted in God kind of diffuses some of that because you

realize, yeah, well, okay, I'm, I'm actually not worth that much and I don't need to worry about it because in the end of the day, he's the one that matters. Yeah. I think one litmus test to ask myself and for us to ask ourselves like about my state of pride or humility is just how much it stings when I'm criticized and how elated I feel when praised. I don't know how you can get around that. It would seem unnatural to not feel anything if you were to just start abusing me right now. That'd be weird. If you're anything like me, you sometimes reach

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Well, you know, anger, I had a teacher, this was actually the first teacher who got me interested in Thomas Aquinas was teaching, I took a class on passions, you know, the passions of the soul. We were talking about anger. And he said, well, basically, you can summarize Aquinas on anger in this way. You did that to me, you know, so anger always has that kind of structure. Like do you know who I am? You who are like nothing or whatever, did that, which I magnify now into

something big, to me, and of course I have a completely inflated sense of what that means to, you know, say me. And that, you know, so like there is righteous anger, but we have to be constantly on guard because we inflate, like I deflate you, I magnify the thing that you did, and I of course have a gigantic idea of myself. And so that is always like what you have to subject to, like okay, I mean I'm quick to say, I'm far from perfection and humility,

I'm far from perfection and controlling anger and all of that. But I think understanding it helps. Yeah. Criticism is interesting. I was walking through the airport the other day and I saw these two Sheilas over there and one was like going off about something and I just thought of what a common experience this is among humans where we get together with somebody else and we complain about somebody else to them. And there might be legitimate reasons to do that, especially

if it's done in a certain way. I understand that. But often, it isn't. And it seems to me that when I criticize someone to you, let's say, what I'm doing is I'm showing you why they are bad and I'm making myself out to be the good guy. And so you can see why people get off on it, why it becomes addictive, because I get to

exalt myself through our shared experience of lowering this individual. And you see this a lot on YouTube. You see this a lot in the comment section where people, even with, it's been really frightening actually to see people will have, you know, certain, what are they called, the kind of profile picture or something. You can tell that they're a Christian because of their profile picture, and they say the most nasty, most condescending things to people online. And you go, why, when did that become acceptable? And I wonder how many of us Christians often appeal to our blessed Lord's righteous anger in the temple without realizing we're not our blessed Lord and therefore are much more susceptible to the lower passions getting

away from us. It's very hard to control your tongue, you know, and it's one of the most dangerous parts of the body. So, you know, because what we say can can inflict a lot of harm. And, you know, I, well, I got advice from a wise older priest in religious life who said, yeah, you know, you just have to, you just have to zip it and it burns, you know, it burns because you want to say, you know, look at him or can you believe what, what he did and you just have to not say it. And that is very hard to do. What does Thomas say about detraction and calumny and what's the difference?

Yeah, so detraction is when you say something which might even be true about someone behind their back, basically. Backbiter is the phrase you translated. That's probably the most common way to do it. I'm not going to say it to your face, but I'll say it when you're not here. Yeah, and it will damage my character somehow. Exactly. And so, I mean, we have a whole industry in the media actually that is about passing on

true but damaging things about people and taking some delight in giving the true but damaging things about them. That isn't virtuous and it's not good. I mean, how much of our political podcast consumption revolves around that? That's right. I remember when people would go after Joe Biden or Nancy Pelosi and speak about them with all sorts of, you know, quite brilliant takedowns. How much delight I would take in that. And you're saying that's a sin.

Yes. Yeah, unfortunately it is. And you know, but it takes on a different character when you do it to someone's face, or when you do it in a public setting where you're trying to, you know, like shame the person in front of other people. Well, I remember. That's why Aquinas has different, you know, categorizes those as different. I remember asking myself the question, would I rather, let's say, you know, there be a video of Joe Biden on his knees for the blessed mother praying the rosary, or seem denied communion and

ashamed. And I realized probably the second one. And that sucks, actually. But I don't think I'm alone in that. I think most people who watch this show would be familiar with what I'm saying, if they have any kind of recollection. That's really important, I think, to accuse ourselves of. Because, yeah, as you say, it's a whole industry. OK, but here's a question. When something's done publicly, can't it

be pointed out or refuted or rebuked publicly? Yeah, I mean, certainly. And that's different from trying like, there's, sometimes you need to say something that reflects poorly on someone. Right. And you need to say it for a good reason. And that's not detraction. Yeah, like think about, yeah, just just any kind of election, any kind of national election. You've got people speaking negatively about the other person, presumably some of that's necessary. He wouldn't be good running the country and here's why. That's right, I mean you might even be in an

employment, you know, you're running, you know, you have a small business and you have to make a decision about like who's going to be in charge of the whatchamacallit, you know, next week. Who are we going to put in charge of the whatchamacallit project? And, you know, you might take counsel from different people in the company and say, hey, I was thinking about, you know, like, I think it's either going to be, you know, John or Suzanne, you know, and I can't, you know, do you have an opinion? And they might need to tell you something like, well, you know, John is not so good at this kind of thing. And so you might not want to put him in charge of that.

That's not detraction because there's a good reason to bring it out. And if it's done, yeah, it has to be done charitably. That all makes complete sense, but let me offer you a more difficult case the McCarrick scandal when that broke and became public A lot of people were commenting on that Is that detraction? I? Don't I mean it once it becomes public I think then you know you need to say something about it and You know because it seems these are Catholic should be seen

Denouncing as evil these things that have come to light. Yeah, absolutely. It would be weird if Catholics are like, no, no, don't want to do that, that's detraction. That would seem like we're just circling the wagons and trying to protect the church from looking bad. That's right. So, I mean, if someone is, I mean, you could, it doesn't have to be the McCarrick case.

It could be anybody who's committing a crime or is harming other people. Like, you need to take action to stop that. It doesn't always follow that you, like, you do a press release that you've done that. And that's one of the, I mean, I think there has been, you know, some people in the church were like, well, how do we want to handle this? You know, do we handle it by putting out a press release? And certain people may be so high profile that, yes, you do have to, like, it's a public scandal, it has to be addressed publicly. But yeah, those are difficult and sensitive judgments that have to be made in an individual case, because in general, you wouldn't publicize something just to make somebody look bad. I mean, we are in the habit

of doing that in our culture. It's called the perp walk for the police, where they arrest somebody and they put them in handcuffs and they walk them into the courthouse, you know, from the police station into the courthouse, which is just a way, if you're a prosecutor, of like making him look bad in the public eye and kind of humiliating him, even though he's not yet convicted of the crime. And so, you know, if you're just trying to do that, you're just trying to like take him down a notch in the public eye. Well, you know, if that's not called for by the virtue of justice, then maybe there's, maybe that's not such a good thing to do. But you know, we don't want to get into a position where we're saying,

oh, we have to treat criminals with kid gloves. I mean, they're doing something terrible. We need to, we need to, they need to be punished. They should be punished. And so there's nothing wrong with punishing them. Yeah. And what's social media has made this very difficult. And I say this as a content creator, which is like a phrase I didn't know existed when I started doing this, but I guess that's what I am.

How easy it is to get clicks through outrage, how easy it is to get clicks through criticizing other people and tearing other people down. And then you can deceive yourself by doing it in a sort of sophisticated way with maybe spiritual language, with a few caveats of we should pray for that person. But to have that, yeah, that intellectual honesty, why am I doing this? Yeah. Well, I hope that we're doing all of these things for the salvation of souls, you know?

So if it's not helpful to souls, then, you know, and if it's not leading us to God, then it's actually really bad for us. Yeah, yeah. Could we talk about what Thomas Aquinas has to say about curiosity and studiousness? Sure. Because I think this plays into that, right? It's my curiosity that leads me to want to binge these different podcasts and these YouTube

things that come up that are just gossip. Yeah. So what does Aquinas mean by curiosity and what is studiousness? So curiosity, it generally sounds like a positive thing to us now, you know, but Aquinas uses the word with a kind of negative connotation, so curiosity, which really means like being interested in things that aren't, that aren't important for you.

And so like going off, going, you know, going down rabbit holes and the internet is kind of made for going down rabbit holes. And also like, you know, that's part of what social media is calculated to help you do. So he would say, you know, if you have a job, you should be focused on what you're doing and not on all the other things

that might come along to distract you. Distraction, maybe would be a better way to put it for Aquinas. Curiositas is like a voluntarily entering into the distraction. So when you say, yeah, okay, you know, I know I'm supposed to be, I'm supposed to be doing my homework right now, but I'm going to now spend an hour watching, I don't know, cat videos.

You know, that's maybe the more benign thing that you could do. And that's not, that's not helping you Okay, if you do it once and you're like, okay, I got a refocus Not necessarily the vice of curiosity toss yet, but but when you habitually indulge in that Distraction then that's exactly what Aquinas means by curiosity toss. I think right, right I mean, that's exactly what Aquinas means by curiositas, I think. Right, right. I mean, that's good.

I think that's good. Because it's wanting information that I don't need, or what is it, is wanting too much of information I don't need, or wanting it in the wrong way or something. I suppose this is different to the distraction we would think of when we think of dissociation. You know, I'm thinking of Joseph Pieper's excellent book. By the way, the best book I've read on Thomas Aquinas

was Joseph Pieper's book on Thomas Aquinas. I mean, the best introduction. That's what I'd recommend to people. But his book on leisure is really interesting, right? Leisure is that which recreates us. I don't know if he uses the phrase, but dissociation would seem to be the counter to that, where we engage in distracting activity

to kind of, in a way, distance ourselves from ourselves, it seems to me, to kind of fragment the interior life so I don't have to be present to me or my surroundings. And that becomes attractive the more you are sort of in pain or hate yourself, it seems to me. You know, there's a great connection there, and Pieper makes it in his book on the theological virtues. So he has a book, Faith, Hope and Love, and when he treats it in his book on the theological virtues. So, he has a book,

Faith, Hope, and Love, and when he treats hope. So, this is back to what we were talking about before. So, it's connected with despair, and it's the vice of sloth. So, most people think sloth, or in, you know, the classical term for it is achadia. They think that that's like laziness, but he says it's not necessarily laziness because what it involves is like trying to not, like you're sad at the great thing that you're called to do. So here's an example. Now, okay, I've worked on a doctorate,

you're working on a doctoral dissertation. It takes a lot of work to write a book or write a doctoral dissertation. And part way through, you're like, man, this is, you know, like I'm still slogging away at this. It's going, you know, I'm looking for something else to occupy my mind right now because I'm having a hard time with my writing. And so what often does the author do?

He's like, it's really important for me to get my shelves organized. Like I have to alphabetize my books, right? You know, you spend a whole afternoon putting your books in alphabetical order. Okay, not a bad thing to do of itself, but is it what you're supposed to be doing? No, not at all. And that's like, sloth is built into that because you are, you're finding the great task difficult and so you're fleeing from it

and that can take the form of lots of other kinds of activity, some of which, like the worst forms of it would be like, I don't know, video games and pornography, which you're trying to like not have to look at my real situation and I'm gonna escape into these other things that just absorb my attention and kind of numb me to the reality of where I'm really at. And that's profoundly bad for you spiritually.

How does that differ from, is it utropilia? Is that the Greek word for play that Thomas Aquinas says is a virtue, but then he gives us free reasons? Which is like delight. Yeah, where play goes wrong. And he uses that analogy of some St. John, I don't know which one, who's using a bow and arrow. And he says, can I do this all day?

And someone says, no, the string will break. And he says, yeah, just like one needs to lighten the string, the load on the string, one needs to lighten their minds so as not to burn out, to put it in modern terms. But so play is good, right? That's right, of course. But when it becomes a kind of a escape from the thing that you're really supposed to be doing, then it's not necessarily so good. Right. So we wouldn't want to go to one extreme because you can imagine somebody like working their butt off all day and they just come home and they grab a beer and they just watch

some sitcom. That could be very beautiful. But it seems to me that if you start doing that every night, that would be a terrible thing to do. Well, or at least to say, like, it needs to be, like it needs to be moderate and proportionate to what you're doing. Like, you can't work all the time, you're not supposed to work all the time. I'm not advocating working all the time. But you can begin to, like, escape doing the work, but now think about it in terms of your spiritual, like, the work you need to do in your spiritual life. You can escape the work you need to do in your spiritual life by fleeing into busyness. Like, oh, I'm so busy, I don't have time to like do my prayer, or I don't have time to go to church, or I don't have time to do these other things.

And that's not going to be good for you, which is different from the kind of restorative break, where you can let your mind go free of things. I mean, I, for myself, like, I find just taking a walk can be restorative in the sense that like, okay, my mind is free of the thing that I've been focused on and now it's just time for my mind to wander. Somebody taught me, I've only done it a few times,

but took me fly fishing. And I absolutely loved it because you have to pay attention to what you're doing, but you're in a beautiful natural environment on the shore of a stream. And you're rhythmically trying like cast this fly into the stream and it's just like just enough focus that you feel you can feel very very relaxed. So your mind is kind of occupied but also kind of free and that's a wonderful a wonderful balance

but I find that like certain kinds of recreation don't produce that kind of freedom of mind. Does that make sense? It makes all the sense in the world. I'm an avid cigar smoker. And I've made a choice not to be on technology when I sit down for a cigar. And I noticed the difference.

Because there's part of me that thinks, oh, I should get my phone and like look at stuff and and there's something exciting about that idea but when I do it yeah there's some excitement to it but I feel I find myself more agitated whereas if I sit and just look and think I feel much more at rest. I wonder how much of our desire to do anything has to do with trying to occupy this thing we call the mind Like when I was a teenager, this is unfortunate maybe but if you should have said like what things do you love? What kind of art or what are you into? like I was into like horror films porn and heavy metal and I think part of my

love of those things was because they would grab my mind and focus me on it and not let go. Does that make sense? And I think so much of our activity is this desire to find something that will just finally, I think what we hate so much is this, these thoughts that come and whirl around our brain and we just wanna be centered on something

like you were with the fly fishing. and obviously that's a wholesome way of being centered on something but do you see what I'm saying? Yeah absolutely well I mean I think about this a lot when I fly so I travel a fair amount to give these to Mystic Institute talks and that kind of thing and you know if you fly in an airplane now maybe a lot of people watching this will be like, okay, this guy is a total loser, like I don't know what he's talking about. But like people want to put their window blinds down so they can watch the screen. I like to have the window blind up so that I can look out. It's like I am 30,000 feet above

the ground. Like this is really cool. It's beautiful. I love to sit and look out the window on a plane. I really don't like watching movies on planes. And that's because I want to be able to look at the world outside, which is actually really amazing. And I often find, you know, that people like, are giving me a dirty look because it's like, hey, you've got your window open, everyone else, like it's daylight out, everyone else has got their window down. Yeah, that maybe that makes me

a loser, but I do. No, it makes you interesting. Obviously, it makes you interesting. I mean, think about if space travel becomes a thing for the average person and we can make trips to the moon. You would think, but you would be wrong, that everyone would be just fascinated every single time looking out into space as they went toward the moon. But no, the exact same thing would happen. We'd shut the blinds, we wouldn't want to look outside, and we'd just look at our screens. Now you're clearly the more healthy one.

Well it's, I mean I find that a computer screen and a mobile screen, you know, they can absorb your attention and time can go by very fast, but not always in a way that's, you know, like allows the mind to relax or to go deeper into things. It's more unusual that the screen helps you to go deeper. Now I think it's not impossible. The screen allows you to go deeper. Like I'm thinking about like, okay, I'm working on an article and I'm thinking about Thomas Aquinas. I can be, okay, maybe I'm able to like transcend the fact that I'm looking in a screen. But the screen is generally a distraction. Was it Nicholas Carr who wrote the book The Shallows?

It's this idea that our knowledge is... That isn't it? That's so true. I mean, I usually on the weekends put my phone and computers away, and I do not look at them once from Friday night to either Sunday night or Monday morning. And what I find is what I get done is much less. Like, I might read a few chapters of a book, but it's much deeper than millions of things that I'm doing, but none of them have depth very often. That's right. Well, can I bring up a slightly different subject, which is, but I think it's related. It's like the experience of having a Christian community

and like being present to other people. Because I think this is also something that we, you know, the phones constantly impair our ability to do, but is a really great source of spiritual strength and support, you know, like developing friendships, it really helps when you are both looking at the same thing and, you know, able to talk about it, like guys going to a baseball game is like a classic example of male friendship, you know, you're seated side by side, you're both looking at something, it doesn't, it's not so overpowering that you can't like have a conversation, you're enjoying the game but you're both looking at something. It doesn't, it's not so overpowering that you can't like have a conversation.

You're enjoying the game, but you're also talking about something else. These kinds of friendly activities, I think, are really, really important for us. And finding the occasions to have them is very restorative. To this same point, when you and I were kids, everything we had was, or I were kids everything we had Was or most of the things we have were communal there was a communal phone

There was a communal radio or record player. There was a communal TV, right? All these things were shared by each other You know where I'm going Whereas now the modern family all of these things have been isolated and so I can sort of curate my reality. These are the songs I'll watch, these are the shows I'll watch, whatever. These are the things I'll look at. And I think that modern parish living is a great antidote to that, because when you go into a parish, you have to confront the poverty of other people, and they have to confront

yours. The people talking in the back, even though this is a bloody church, would you please shut up? Or you're in adoration and the old woman who is saying her rosary, but not in her head and not out loud, but just so you can hear her whistling every time she says a word with an S in it. And you want to tell her off, but you shouldn't, obviously. off, but you shouldn't, obviously. And I don't know, I just feel like other people, who is it that said hell is other people? Satra or someone? They were wrong, clearly, but we often complain about our local parish because of the music, because of the preaching, because of other people, because we got this

church up the road from us where the lights used to be beautiful and soft and you priests came in and they're like fluorescent as terrible. But I just think this is probably good for us. It's not an excuse for bad liturgy. It's not an excuse for people to talk in church, but it's good for us who have these curated experiences where nothing is outside of what I want to encounter other people that bother us. And it seems like increasingly we're living in a society where we don't have to do that. Yeah, well, I mean, I think especially of music, because music, you know, prior to,

I don't know, 50 or 75 years ago, music had to be a common experience. Like, it'd be very difficult to have an isolated solo experience of music, maybe if you're in a room playing a piano by yourself. But I mean, for the most part, music was a common, something we experienced in common and that we did together. And recording obviously makes it possible now to not strictly have that, but we've, like it has become more and more an absolutely isolated individual experience with earbuds or whatever.

So that most people, it seems to me, now experience music in an isolating way, not in a communal way, but not at church, where we actually sing together. And that's really helpful. And also for, as a Dominican, we sing together five times a day. So the Dominicans are coming to the chapel, we're not always in tune, but whatever, we're singing together every day. So, you know, the Dominicans are coming to the chapel, we're not always in tune, you know,

but whatever, we're singing together every day. And it is amazing the kind of effect that that has on you over time. I mean, I really do think that it's one of the riches of being, you know, being a religious or being a Dominican. Like, we have much more beauty in our lives. We have a vow of poverty, but we live in a beautiful building with a beautiful chapel and there's beautiful artwork and then we sing beautiful music and we do it together all the time. And sometimes it's a drag,

it's like I don't really feel like going to the chapel right now, but the bell is ringing, it's time to go. But it is a tremendous gift and it's like, it's very hard outside of those kinds of things to live that way anymore. Why is singing important at all? Well, I mean, Augustine talks about singing, you know, in the praise of God.

He's got some famous lines, a famous line that is attributed to him is that he who sings praise twice, you know. I don't know how historically accurate that is, but anyway, it's beautiful, it's a beautiful idea that singing, you know, like this is part of the Christian liturgy has included, and of course the Jewish liturgy included singing in a really important way. So, I mean, something about singing, I think it's Augustine who has a sermon about this, how there's like something about joy that he wants to erupt into song. And you see that in, I don't know, you see it in like athletic events where, you know, like singing the fight song together or singing the national anthem together, like there's something about it that brings us together and makes you feel like you are in, like you're communing with these other people.

It's something really beautiful and powerful about it actually. Yeah. Well sorrow desires to be expressed in song. I wonder if it's like a fuller embodiment of the human voice. It brings more of myself into the thing that I'm expressing. Well I can tell you at our summer conference last year where you spoke with a closing Mass. I don't think you were there for the closing Mass, but it was in the crypt level of the National Shrine. I was there, I don't know if maybe that was

a different day, but yeah, okay. So at the end of the Mass, the Mass was very powerful. In fact, it was one of the most powerful experiences celebrating Mass I've ever had, because, you know, I preached the homily and I asked the students to place their lives on the altar before God and to ask God what He wants them to do with their lives. And it was just amazing because it was like a basilica with 250 young people who seemed to all be very seriously spiritually doing that. And it was like, basilica with 250 young people who seemed to all be very seriously spiritually doing that. And it was like, I felt it, you know, in the moment, and it was very quiet. And then we were celebrating the Eucharist. I mean, it was like the most powerful Mass, I think I've ever celebrated since my first Mass. And, you know, right next to me

was Father Gregory Pine. He's crying, I'm crying, like we're saying the Eucharistic prayer. It was really powerful. And then at the end of the Mass, I mean, like that doesn't often happen to me. It's like, what a gift. Okay, at the end of the Mass, we're processing out. We had not planned any music for the end of the Mass. I mean, I think there was a hymn, but I mean, there wasn't a big plan. And some student intoned the Salve Regina after the hymn.

Like normally at a big mass, like at a conference, okay, the mass is over, people have got places to go. Like they're getting up, they're starting to move. Some people are going to stay in their places, other people are going to want to chat with their neighbor, whatever, it's breaking up. It didn't break up. And it was like this moment of spiritual, I don't know, spiritual power in the church. And so no one moved. And then someone intoned the Salvia Regina. And it was like the most powerful Salvia Regina I've ever heard, because it was like the unity of all of these people

singing this beautiful chant to Our Lady, and it was like, where did this come from? It was like, made me cry all over again. And at the end of it, like, it was silent, and nobody moved. And then somebody intoned the Ave Regina Caelorum, and we sang that. And I was like, how long is this going to go on? You know, it ended after that. But I mean, it was like, how long is this gonna go on? It ended after that. But I mean, it was like the music gave expression to some powerful communion that we had together. And that was extraordinary. I mean, I still love that. I mean, it's like one of the best masses

I've ever celebrated. What does intoned mean? Why don't you just say sung? What's the difference? Well, I mean if you're a cantor, you're the person who starts it off. Oh, I see. You know, so you intoned it. Like you get the right tone. Oh, I see. Yeah. Was it the Dominican Salve? No, it was just the Roman Salve. Is it the Dominican Salve? Did I get that right? That's That is my favorite. It's beautiful. Absolutely. But it's not known by everybody, so in a big group it may be better to do the Roman. I mean, this was actually something when I moved from, you know, I grew up on the west coast. I grew up in Seattle. And then I moved to the east coast, and I ended up working in Washington, D.C. This was before I became a Dominican. And I discovered

that like people in Washington, D.C., who go to Catholic churches, know the Salve Regina, which I did not know. You know, like I came from the West Coast where we didn't sing that kind of thing. But it actually was a wonderful thing to like, learn that, kind of be a stranger and learn it, like learn it step by step and discover that this is like this incredible richness of our, of our tradition. And, you know, it's like, as a kid in Seattle,

I didn't even know that stuff like that existed anymore, but that is our tradition. And it's, it's great when we learn it. I mean, so I think, I think people in Seattle know the Salve Regina now, but you know, in the 1980s or 1970s, no. I learned the Salve Regina and decided to memorize it in a sticky pub in Owasso, Michigan from Father Joseph Fessio, who founded Ignatius Press. There was about four of us, and we were doing some business dealings out there,

and we had a beer or something like that. And it was just like dive bar, because it was attached to our hotel. And Father Pessio says, well, why don't we end with the Salve? And I was a little embarrassed that I didn't know it, but it was so beautiful to do it so, it wasn't, we didn't sing it out loud

to embarrass other people or something like that, but just did it to ourselves. And I was just like, I need to go memorize that. So the next day I just listened to it 100 times, not 100 times, but a just did it to ourselves, and I was just like, I need to go memorize that. So the next day I just listened to it a hundred times. Not a hundred times, but a bunch of times. And now my family and I sing it every night, and it's delightful. Yeah. When I was in law school, and I was like coming back to the practice of the faith as an adult, you know, I realized, okay, I need to go to confession. Went to confession. Turned out I went to a Dominican church to go to confession. Got great advice then confessional.

Came back for Sunday Mass, and I still remember it vividly sitting in this Dominican church or at that point I was standing because it was the creed. Well, first of all, there was the homily, and at the homily, have you ever had this experience where you feel like this homily was written only for me and like the priest is talking directly to me. So I was sitting there thinking, wow, like everything this guy is saying, like I need to do that. So that was already like a powerful experience.

And then we stood up and they sang the creed in Latin and Gregorian chant. And it was the first time I'd ever heard that. And it brought tears to my eyes. the creed in Latin and Gregorian chant. So beautiful. And it was the first time I'd ever heard that. And it brought tears to my eyes. I was like, I didn't know that this even existed. So in a certain way, my Dominican vocation started there because much later, years later,

when I moved to Washington, DC, I thought, well, those Dominicans were pretty good at that parish. I should go find them here in Washington, DC.C., and, you know, eventually met the Dominican House of Studies and... Yeah, the creed is absolutely beautiful when sung. I feel like the West, we need to reclaim transcendence in our liturgies or just forget about it. And I think a lot of people are trying to reclaim that, right? Bishop Barron seems to speak a lot about the importance of beauty and liturgy and things like this. And I don't know anyone, maybe you know somebody, I don't know anybody, maybe just the circles I run in who are like, we need more

guitar. It'd be good if we had a drum kit back in mass to get people pumped. I don't know anybody saying that today. No, I think we've made enormous progress. I mean, compared to what it was like when I was a kid, or even, you know, when I started out in the Dominican Order, you know, 20-some years ago, things have improved a lot. So now they're still far from perfect, but we've made a lot of progress. And I think, like, having a sense that the mass, like, there's a vertical element, you know, that's a very big, very big and important element to like keep in view. And it's, you can lose it if you're not intentional about it. Because the Orthodox seem to have not lost it. They never seem to go through a time.

I know they've had revisions in their liturgy, but this is one of the reasons a lot of people are so attracted to Eastern Orthodoxy is because they do have that transcendent element in their liturgy. I think the traditional Latin mass does too. I think the novus ordo can, but very often it just feels bland, something more like a lecture with a few things going on. You're seeing progress there? Oh, I think so. I mean, I think the younger clergy are much more, like, sensitive to beauty

in the liturgy, it seems to me. I think that's a lot of the fruit. I mean, Benedict XVI was, you know, that was like a big theme of his papacy. And I think that inspired a lot of people. And I see that in a lot of the clergy. So, I think there's reason to be optimistic on that. What happened? Why did we ever want ugly churches and ugly, like was that demonic? Was it just merely a response to like cultural swings? Yeah, that's a good question.

I mean, I didn't live through it myself. I saw it like as it was was like I was born in 1970. So, you know, I was growing up in the 1970s in Seattle, Washington, where there was a lot of liturgical experimentation. Well, actually, I was talking with a friend about this recently. Even despite that, there still was a lot of the kind of traditional sociological reality of what it meant to be like in a Catholic parish. Like, our lives really revolved around the Catholic parish. That was really good. There was something very strong there. But the liturgical forms were not good, and so we've made

huge strides. But, I mean, what was it that caused people to want to move away from the traditional liturgy? I don't even just mean the traditional liturgy. I'm saying I'm setting the bar much lower. I'm like, why would anyone decide to make ugly buildings? I don't understand. We drove past the church today and it was just embarrassingly ugly.

And I don't know why we did that. And I don't know if it was because I've no it's clearly they didn't think it was ugly Yeah, well, I mean they wanted to experiment with new artistic forms or something I mean you're trying to be most charitable to read it like I don't I mean I think there were reasons why people wanted to try it So but I don't think it really worked out, You know, so we experimented and we learned something. Yeah, because we say we learned something, but I mean, what do we mean by we? Because the certain people that may have been all about creating those ugly things may still be attending those ugly churches

quite happy to do it. The rest of us kind of maybe grew up after that phase. So I guess, have you thought about why it is the case that Catholics are attracted to transcendence and beauty? That's a weird thing. Why are people attracted to beauty? That's like, why do we want to eat food? But It's bizarre because we're not, people aren't attracted to a more reverent, beautiful liturgy because they're trying to be faithful Catholics. I don't think that's why they're doing it. They understand that this is perhaps what the church would have us desire, but we desire it because it's beautiful. And it's just weird to me that we went through a phase

where we all decided to desire something ugly. And I just don't, I don't understand why that happened. It must have been a pendulum swing of some kind. Maybe the older folks watching this show can enlighten us below. Yeah, I mean, I think there were, when you talk to people who went through the changes, they say, oh, you know, like the mass that you see when you go to a traditional liturgy and they've taken great care with it is not the average parish mass that we had.

You've got the cream with a crop going to the... Yeah, it's not the average. Okay, so I understand that. But even so, I think Gregorian chant is beautiful. I think it's noble. I think it elevates the liturgy, and I think it's a great musical form. It's part of our tradition. Why wouldn't we learn it? Why wouldn't we bring it forward and value it

and teach it to our children and keep it going? I mean, I think that's not that hard to do. I mean, of course it takes some effort, but it's certainly possible the church has managed to transmit it to us down the centuries, we can transmit it to the next generation. So, you know, those things are, you know, we can do that and I think we should do that.

I think in fact, we are doing that in certain ways. Even acapella would be fine. Just burn the piano and just acapella gorgeous hymns from our treasury. That'll do. Just do that. That's much easier. That's what's interesting to me is like so much of improving the Western liturgy would

be about like doing less. Like don't try to entertain us. Don't tell a joke from the pulpit. Don't play the, get rid of the piano. Get rid of those 8,000 music stands you have. Just don't, just do away with all that. Anyway, I'm sorry, now I'm just whining.

Well, can I, I mean, a more provocative opinion is the gospel is meant to be sung. It's very, very rarely sung. Is it meant to be sung? The epistle, you know, so like the first reading, the second reading, there are tones printed in the missal to, you know, to guide you if you are going to sing it. So, it could be sung, but it's just very rarely sung. I think, you know, so it can be sung in English, and I think that's very beautiful to do on, especially on a solemn occasion. So, we, you know, we teach our deacons to sing the gospel, and on the big feast days we do try to sing the gospel, and it's very beautiful when you do that.

You receive the sacred text in a different way. You definitely do. Because you listen to it more carefully. I think the words strike you differently when you hear it chanted. A hundred percent. Yeah. What do you think about lay people praying the liturgy of the hours? I am in favor. I'm pro. Yeah. My wife and I did that this morning sitting on a beach. We got to sit together and pray morning prayer. And we were using Bishop Robert Barron, you know, how you can buy them. They print them monthly and send them to you so you don't have to deal with all the ribbons and the changing.

Okay, next thing, like next spiritual challenge for you, learn the ribbons, you know, but... Do you think I should? Yeah. Well, I mean... Have you ever tried praying the old brivery? I have, yeah. Was it incredibly cumbersome? It is definitely longer, yeah.

I mean, it's definitely longer. Takes more time. Yeah. Someone, a priest that I know was joking, you know, that the new Liturgy of the Hours is really the Liturgy of the Minutes, you know, because you can get it, if you're really going, you know, you can try and get it done fast. So the old Liturgy, you know, the old Liturgy was more demanding. But the new Liturgy, you know, the Liturgy of the Hours, I think, you know, I've been praying, I pray it every day, you know, we pray it communally. It can be very beautiful.

Could it be fuller? Yeah, perhaps it could. But I think, you know, I would like to see us, you know, elevate the way we celebrate the Mass, and, you know, we can make a lot of progress with that. Thomas Aquinas's advice here about prayer might come in handy, because this is not a quote from him, obviously, but you hear people say that, I don't know, like that the mind can only take what the knees can take or something like that. Like if you and I were to sit down, like, let's pray all four mysteries of the rosary. Okay, that's probably unhelpful, because the chances that the two of us are going to be attentive throughout all four mysteries, maybe you more than me, is unlikely, and so stop. You should stop

when that ardor, doesn't Aquinas talk about this, ceases. So maybe there's some wisdom there in the reduction of the Illegitim of the Hours? Yeah, well the Desert Fathers, I think there's one of the Desert Fathers talks about this, and I think it's very wise advice, talks about, like, throwing javelins into heaven, you know. So the goal of the monastic life and the Desert Fathers really tried to do this literally was to pray all the time. What they found is you can't keep your attention focused all the time, but you can, like, repeatedly and frequently, like, throw a glance towards heaven and make, like, make a short prayer.

So it's actually better to do something short and be faithful and do it a lot than to do something that's really long that you'll find burdensome and you won't really pay attention, because it's the attention that is more valuable than like the words that you're saying. You know, the quantity of words is not the important part. There's a game we played in Australia, maybe you do too, as kids called Keepy Uppy where you get a balloon and you like hit it up in the air and then it comes down. You should not let it touch the ground. That's it. That's the game. It's a great game and to me that that resembles prayer that the ceiling is God, the balloon is my heart as it were, and I'm trying to keep it up there.

And so just those quick ejaculations, to use Aquinas's phrase, even though it's an unfortunate phrase today, but we get it, that those quick ejaculation, ejaculatory prayers like, God have mercy on me, a sinner, etc., are ways to kind of keep the heart close to God, I find. That's right, yeah, no, etc. Ways to kind of keep the heart close to God, I find. That's right. Yeah, no, absolutely. I want to tell you about Halo, which is the number one downloaded prayer app in the world. It's outstanding. Halo.com slash Matt Fradd. Sign up over there right now and you will get the first three months for free. That's like a lot of time. You can decide whether it's useful to you or not, whether it's helpful. If you don't like it, you can always quit.

Hello.com slash Matt Fradd. I use it, my family uses it. It's fantastic. There are over 10,000 audio guided prayers, meditations, and music, including Mylofi. Hello has been downloaded over 15 million times in 150 different countries. It helps you pray, helps you meditate, helps you sleep better. It helps you build a daily routine and a habit of prayer. There's honestly so much excellent stuff on this app that it's difficult to get through it all.

Just go check it out. Hello.com. slash. Matt. Fred. The link is in the description below. It even has an entire section for kids. So if you're a parent, you could play little Bible stories for them at night.

It'll help them pray. Fantastic. Hello.com. slash. Matt. Fred. Tell us about Aquinas 101 because y'all have done so... first of all, the quality of those videos was unbelievable and right out of the gate. So thank you. It was Father Gregory Pine who created it, so give him the glory. Yeah. So, we, this was, it was, we started Aquinas 101, which are short, like short 10-minute videos with animations explaining Aquinas. And the idea was, like,

we were having all these campus events with college students on secular college campuses, and they were saying, okay, this is great, but I'd like to kind of have a more basic introduction to Aquinas so that I can start kind of learning Aquinas, learn to read Aquinas that, you know, I'd like to go a little deeper. So they were just supposed to be explainer videos. And our first idea was to just put a Dominican in front of a bookcase and have him talk.

And we were trying to come up with a plan to do that and we approached a benefactor and said, you know Hey, we're gonna need I mean our budget was small, but he said listen You I don't want you to do it in front of a bookcase I'm gonna give you a larger gift so that you can actually pay for real production God bless that man. Yeah, so so he pushed us to do it and we said, alright, we'll make a pilot season so we did like five episodes and then they were really good. And those five, like we showed them to more people and we got a few more donors who helped us make them more and make more of them.

And since then we've been putting out one a week. So it's really, um, it's been a lot of work. I think if we'd realized how much work it was going to be, we never would have done it. You probably identify with that. You would have fallen into sloth. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no, I mean, because it's a lot of work to put those,

you know, to make those videos. We have a really, really good producer. Well, that's what I was gonna ask you. Who's the? You know, so we hired someone, her name is Catherine Willshuesen. She produces the Aquinas 101 videos, and then we have, you we have a video production team

that helps us do the animations. So it's really great. But it's... So you have a bunch of things on this. But by the way, congratulations. 151,000 subscribers is no short or small feat. So recently we created like a little online learning platform. This is Aquinas101.com. And if you go there then you can you can find the videos

organized into courses and there's like little supplementary readings and you take a quiz and you can get a certificate when you finish a course. Come on. So you can watch the videos you know just one by one and that's perfectly fine. That's the way most people do it. But if you want to like actually finish a course. So you can watch the videos, you know, just one by one, and that's perfectly fine. That's the way most people do it. But if you want to, like, actually systematically go through the thought of Aquinas, you can be led through it, you know, like the whole summa basically. I'm going right now. Aquinas101.com. Next you're going to have to get an app.

So this, when we... Father Gregory wanted to name the series Simply Summa, and I overruled him and said, no, Aquinas 101, okay? You're right, he's wrong. It's a terrible name. Well done. Thank you, thank you. I'll let him know that you said that. But then, like, after it had started getting some success, I was talking to a priest, he was from Chile, and he said to me, Father, you know, I love the Aquinas videos, but I do not understand why Aquinas 101. Oh, funny. Because it's just never, like, for an American mind, you know, 101 means intro level. Yep. But if you're not- Aquinas for dummies could have been another one? Yeah, if you're not, if you're not in an American university system, you wouldn't necessarily think of that.

So Father Gregory still thinks it should have been Simply Summa, but anyway. It's Aquinas 101. Well, well done. So, okay, so I'm asking for my sake now. So it's 100% free, that's incredible. And then you create an account, and then there's no choice

but to watch the videos sequentially? No, no, no, you can watch the videos one, in any order you want, but they're organized by courses, so you can take the five video series on the Eucharist and the seven video series on baptism and so forth. So that you're actually taking a little mini course in Aquinas. And then there's tests at the end of each course. There's little tests at the end, and you get a certificate when you're done. Our hope is actually to eventually turn some of these segments into, like, a program for sacramental prep, you know, maybe not for first graders, you know, who are preparing for their First Communion, but maybe for the people teaching the First Communion kids, but then for confirmation

classes, you know, could be, or for an adult, you know, faith formation kind of program. So we would like to be able to get it, like, that's one of our future projects. But I mean, our system, our economic, our financial model here is based on St. Dominic. The idea behind St. Dominic and the Order of Preachers was, I mean, this was very innovative in the 13th century. We go out and preach for free, and we ask people to support it with donations. And that's what's called the mendicant, like, that's why the mendicant orders are the mendicant orders. And it was a controversial thing in the 13th century because—

Just for those at home, mendicare meaning— To beg, yeah. So So this is what we do. This is still our model. We're not gonna put the videos behind a paywall. It's just free. But then we ask people to support it with donations. And so far, people have been very generous to support it. But I can tell you, we are always running up

against the budget constraints for making the next set of videos because they're expensive to make, as you can imagine. Oh, 100%. Yeah, and you do such a good job of them. Well, thanks for telling me that. I think I'll check it out. Aquinas101.com, everyone should go check it out. We will send you a certificate with your name on it.

All right. That's good. Hey, I got a question about something Thomas Aquinas said that I can't tell if I'm trying to rationalize something, or if I think I'm right, and maybe most of church tradition needs to be corrected. Which one do you think it is? All right, so here's what happened. So for the last nine or ten months, I've been eating pretty much carnivore, which is the new fad, I understand. And it's something my

wife's been doing for two years. And ever since, you know, you do it for like a week, and it's pretty brutal. And then you hit a couple of days where it's rotten. And then it's just been really great. And what I find is when I am just true to it, my mind is more easily able to ascend to those spiritual things. And I think it's because my body isn't busy processing the American diet, and so I'm not sluggish. I can recall things more easily. I don't need a nap during the day. I have a lot more energy. And so I guess what I'm asking you is, because Aquinas obviously, and a lot of people, you know, the early monks,

would talk about meat being the problem, that, you know, and that fasting is always involving not having meat. I would much rather it be, and I wonder if like... The carnivore diet. Yeah, I would. Penance by meat eating. Because I honestly think, like, someone on the traditional, traditional, on the on the typical American diet it would be way better for them I would think if they just went on meat and and here's I guess here's the bottom you can see what the question is but just to say it one more way you know

if quite if Aquinas lived today would he really be taking aim at meat or would he be taking aim at all of the processed sugar high fructose corn syrup junk or maybe both or what's your thoughts? You know, I don't know that I have a good answer to this question, but my guess is that for the medieval diet, meat was like a luxury item. Yeah. And so that's part of it. And you know, I think meat is very tasty, you know. And if it's a luxury item, you know, you think meat is very tasty, you know, and if you, if it's a luxury item, you know, you really look forward to it.

It's a more expensive way to get your food than eating grains, for example, I think, in general. I mean, at least in the medieval world or the ancient world. Yeah, I think so today, it's probably true. But like last Lent, I gave up meat, but it wasn't a sacrifice. Now I could have made it a sacrifice, but I may have been a little lazy, right? But I would eat like corn chips or tuna or, which is the worst, or like celery or hummus or egg.

So, do you see what I mean? Like it's really easy actually to not eat meat. Very easy. I feel like a hypocrite by talking about this because I don't live by this, but I have tried it and I really liked it when I would persevere in it, but I have to admit I'm imperfect at it. But it's this, fasting,

just kind of traditional monastic fasting. And so to talk about that a little more, there's a great book that is, I think, out of print, so I'm gonna say it and then everyone's gonna try and find it and they won't be able to find it, but it's called To Love Fasting. It's by a French Benedictine, I think, and it was written in the 20th century, maybe in the 1980s or late 70s, but the basic thesis of the book can be summarized very simply. He says, you know, like, fasting is not just a negation, it's setting yourself free to be, like, to be able to ascend to the heights.

Because, and he goes through, like, this whole explanation of, like, how if you habituate yourself to moderate fasting, and this is not, like, extreme fasting, we're talking about, like, limiting how much you eat, like, in the morning, eating your main meal in the early to mid-afternoon, and then maybe only eating something light in the evening. He's kind of decreasing, I mean, I don't think he decreased the total number of calories by a lot, but it's like regulating when you would eat

and giving yourself a long period when you're not eating. And he described that as, like, being able to sort of master your bodily appetites, but not just that, it's really like your mind becomes freer to rise up. Now, that's similar to the thing that you're describing. I think probably something about our appetites and the rhythm and what we eat, the rhythm of when we eat and what we eat, has an effect on our spiritual capacities, like just our ability to focus, but also to be a little detached from our bodily appetites. So anything that involves a little discipline in our appetites is probably good, but also, like, that sort of, I don't know, being a little bit hungry may be good for the mind.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I'm certainly not trying to throw out the established wisdom of fasting from meat, but I also think it's important to say, all right, today we're dealing with a ton of ways to distract ourselves that Aquinas didn't deal with. We deal with constant noise, constant distraction, and that I would think that for the average Catholic, if they were to fast from all social media technology, except for one hour a day, if that were possible or something like that, I think the average Catholic would be doing, and provided that they then took that time and used it effectively, would be doing way better than if they focused on, you know, fasting, fasting from food. But I'm not discounting the fast. I

think we should do both. But I just wonder that if Aquinas lived today, how much of his talking about fasting, because he means it just in regard to food, how much of it today would have to do with other things, do you think? Yeah, well, certainly keeping your attention. Like, Aquinas was pretty disciplined, I think, about his attention. He was also amazing, amazing with his powers of concentration. There's stories about him, the ability to concentrate, where he would not notice things happening around him because he's so focused on what he's doing, but also that he was able to dictate to multiple secretaries

at the same time, like different works. Kind of think of the chess grandmaster who's playing like multiple chess games at the same time. I mean, Aquinas was doing stuff like that, but Aquinas also worked very hard and we have like we have some records of how hard he worked. At his peak production period, like in his 40s, he was producing I think it's 16 big folio pages a workday. I mean, if you can imagine how much energy it takes and concentration. And it's like, this is Aquinas' works. These are very high level, you know,

high-level philosophy and theology. That is amazing. Now, he's not writing with, like, modern footnotes and putting in all the citations and everything, and some of it is, you know, like he's summarizing other people's arguments. But I mean, he's an amazingly brilliant thinker. I mean, you get to know some of the way that he worked. It's really impressive. Do we have any of his handwriting? We do. And what's that like? You know that his handwriting is famously illegible. And that's probably because he was working so fast.

One of the Dominicans that used to live, I mean, he's now deceased, but he used to live at the Dominican House of Studies. When I was a student brother, he was there. He's a church historian. He worked on the Leonine Commission. The Leonine Commission is a commission to produce the standard scholarly editions of Aquinas' works. So he was working on a part of Aquinas' early sentences commentary, like basically Aquinas' doctoral dissertation, where we actually have some of his handwritten texts.

So he had like a talk that he gave about what you can learn about Aquinas from his handwriting. And it was really interesting, because he said, among the things that you can tell is like Aquinas, he was writing with a quill pen, and so whenever he sat down to start work, he would use a knife to sharpen the quill, and then as you're writing, just like a pencil, you know, it becomes a little duller over time. So the line goes from being

really thin to getting thicker, thicker, thicker. And so you could see how long was Aquinas working in each of his work periods by, like, how frequently he sharpened his quill, which is just really interesting. He said sometimes, said sometimes Aquinas had long work periods, other times he clearly got interrupted, because he's right in the middle of the sentence and he stops and then he's sharpening the quill pen. But Aquinas also clearly worked really fast, because that's why his handwriting is sloppy,

but also sometimes he made really obvious mistakes. So he's like, okay, if you're an editor of Aquinas' text and you're reading the sentence and you see it in Aquinas' own handwriting, you know, like, the end of the proof says, therefore God does not exist. It's like, okay, well, what do you do with that? You print it that way? Because that is what he wrote.

This is authentic, really. It's what he wrote, but is it what he meant? Yeah, right. No, it's not what he, he obviously didn't mean to say that. But I mean, it's like a typo that any of us could make. You just are, you know, you don't write it out quite what you what you intended to say. But I mean fascinating things like that. The other recent research has discovered like in Aquinas's Priory there was a, at one stage, there was a bookmaking workshop, you know, so this is like guys are physically, Dominican friars are physically making books, so they've got like, you know, sheepskin that they're using for the books,

and they're cutting off the edges, and all of the little scraps that would fall onto the floor was supposed to be swept up at the end of the day and given to Brother Thomas Aquinas, which it seems he used as like a system of note cards to organize all of his quotations and material because he had, he seems to have kept like files of quotations from the Church Fathers so that he could organize them and use them in his academic work. I mean, it's really interesting when you think about like the kind of work that Aquinas had to do to produce what we now read. Yeah, yeah, it is. But there's

also, now maybe you know this story, this is actually attested in the earliest biographies of Aquinas, like the people who lived with him. Quick question, how many biographies do we have of him within living memory? It's several, isn't it? There are a few, I mean you're testing my memory now. I mean I do know this. More than three. Well, there's like one of his, there are various early biographies and some of them are kind of drawing on the same sources. So you know, when you go back and try and read all the biographical documents, which I did a few years ago for a research project I had to do, I was supposed to, I was asked to write

like a 20 page article on Aquinas's life and works. So this is not my specialty. I want to read this article. Yeah, I'd be happy to send it to you. You can find it. It's in, it's the first chapter of the New Cambridge Companion to Aquinas. So it came out two years ago, maybe. So it's an academic book. But anyway, I worked very hard on that chapter and rere-read all of those original sources, including the depositions for his canonization, which are people who actually knew him and then are testifying under oath about his life. But there was one miracle of Aquinas, like, associated with his life, which was, like, it's so weird that it has to be true, you know, because no one would make this up.

So it is very medieval. All right, so one day Aquinas discovered he was having trouble speaking because he had grown an extra tooth. Okay, what does that mean? I don't know. Maybe wisdom teeth were coming in or something? I don't know. Or his tooth was…

Whatever. wisdom teeth were coming in or something? I don't know. Or his tooth was whatever. Okay, so he prayed to God and then was granted the favor of being able to like pull the tooth out. And he then put the tooth in a pouch that he wore around his neck for the rest of his life to remind him of the mercy that God had shown him in removing this impediment to his ability to teach and preach. I mean, that's so weird. Like what is… Yeah, it's so weird and so… It's so weird that you can't imagine somebody would make it up.

… and not obviously supernatural. No. Someone's not telling this to embellish… No, but it also tells you something about… So he carried two things in this pouch around his neck for most of his adult life. One was the tooth and the other was a relic of St. Agnes, who he had a great devotion to. St. Agnes, you know, is one of the Roman martyrs and Aquinas lived and taught in Rome for a number of years. And, you know, he was an Italian guy. He was from, you know, from between Rome

and Naples, so not that far from Rome. And he had a great devotion to St. Agnes, and there was an occasion towards the end of his life when he was traveling with his traveling companion called his socius, Reginald of Paperno, and they both got very sick. It's probable that they got malaria, and they both had fevers. Aquinas recovered quickly. Reginald was still sick for weeks, and they feared both had fevers. Aquinas recovered quickly. Reginald was still sick for weeks and they feared that he was going to die. Aquinas took the relic out, put it on Reginald's chest, prayed to St. Agnes, and

Reginald was healed. And that led Aquinas then to promise his students that every year on St. Agnes' feast day, he would host them for a dinner, because he was, at that point, it was the end of his life. He was a famous professor in Naples, and the King of Naples paid him in gold for teaching in Naples. It was like a deal that the King of Naples had made with the Dominican order to get Aquinas assigned back to Naples, because he was such a famous professor. And so, Aquinas apparently had access to some of that money and promised to give a dinner for his students every year on Agnes' feast day, which he was only able to do once and then he died. But it's like, these are interesting stories that are maybe not quite what you would expect

from a Catholic saint, and that's part of the reason why, yeah, they seem to be very well historically attested. I mean, I think they're true. Tell me another interesting story. Let's see. After his death, so this also, like, I gained a totally new appreciation working on this article about Aquinas, like the man and the saint, and not just the scholar.

I mean, I've really loved Aquinas' works for a long time and found enormous wisdom in them, but working on this article, I realized, like, this man was really a saint, like truly an amazing, holy man. And so, he was known to be holy, like, towards his death. Okay, there's the miracle of the herring. I don't know if you've heard about this. Okay, so Aquinas was already not doing well. He'd stopped writing, and, you know, there's the famous episode where he stopped writing. He was then called by the pope to go to the Council of Lyon. So he's living in Naples, and he's got to go from Naples to France.

And you know, it's, I think it was already the winter when he was supposed to start the journey and he began traveling and he was not doing well. So they're going slowly. He's riding on the back of an ass because even though Dominicans were supposed to, they're not allowed to ride on horses, which is out of poverty, but Aquinas wasn't healthy enough to walk. So he's riding on an ass. The ass went under a tree. Aquinas hit his head on the tree branch. That is what led eventually to his death. In fact, like interesting sidebar, the skull of Aquinas was recently, they recently did some

historical investigation with the skull and determined that he died from a, like a sub, like a hematoma, like a slow brain bleed, which they're able to tell from his skull. So yeah, he was killed by hitting his head on a tree branch. Real quick, arses don't move quickly. How could you possibly die from a tree branch if you're on a donkey? I think if you're going, you don't have to be going that fast. If the donkey goes under a tree branch that's hanging down

and you can't duck low enough, like the donkey doesn't have a problem because the tree branch is above his head, but it's not above your head and you hit your head on the tree branch, and I think that's all it takes. Okay, so Aquinas was sick. He was slowly dying from this. They took him to a nearby castle owned by his sister, because of course Aquinas was

a nobleman, and he's in his sister's castle, and he's not eating. So his socius, Reginald, goes to him and says, Brother Thomas, like, you've got to eat. What can I get you to eat? And he said, I would like herring. And, you know, because he loved herring when he lived in Paris. So Reginald goes out into the courtyard and the fishmonger, the guy selling the fish has just arrived, and he says, do you have any herring? And the guy says, no, we don't have any herring. Herring are from the Northern Atlantic.

That's not native to here. And he said, well, what do you have? He opened up his basket. It was full of herring. So the guy brought, Reginald brought the herring to Aquinas and Aquinas ate some of of herring. So the guy brought, you know, his reginal brought the herring to Aquinas, and Aquinas ate some of the herring. And this was in his canonization deposition that, you know, they're interviewing these witnesses to see if Aquinas is a saint, and one of them was present for this miracle. And the person questioning him obviously is skeptical. He said like, well,

how do you know it's herring? He's like, I used to live in Paris, I know what herring is, you know, like, and he said, well, how is it cooked? He said, some of it was baked and some of it was fried, and I ate some of it. So it's like, okay, that's a kind of a quirky little miracle associated with Aquinas. But what's more impressive is that he eventually did die a few weeks later. They moved him to a monastery because Aquinas said, I don't want to die in a secular place like my sister's castle. I want to die in a religious place. So he was moved to this monastery, Fasanova.

That's where he died. He made a profession of faith just before he died. He received viaticum, seemingly very devoutly. But immediately after his death, his tomb became this immense place of pilgrimage. And that is like very surprising, actually, you know, that he was already famous in his day and not only for his writing, but for his holiness. And immediately miracles were associated with his tomb.

And then like the best proof of this is that there broke out a huge dispute between the monks who wanted to keep his body and the Dominicans who wanted to get his body back. And the reason that was such a heated dispute is because there were all these people who wanted to come and venerate Aquinas' relics. So there's a long story about, you know, what happened to his body after that. But I was very touched to like learn that this great friend who I read all the time isn't just like a brilliant wisdom figure, but is actually like a really holy man who can teach me about like how I should live my life. Mm. Y'all should do like a herring feast once a year or something on the feast of Thomas Aquinas.

Yeah, I don't know if I've ever eaten herring, honestly. Yeah. Isn't it true that they asked him to kind of give them a commentary on the Song of Songs as he was dying and that he did sort of orally give that? I'm not ready to say it's not true, dying and that he did sort of orally give that? I'm not ready to say it's not true, but I'm not sure. You haven't heard of it. Maybe you would have if it was true.

Interesting. Fantastic. Thomas Aquinas, what a guy. What are some, just like people have misconceptions about Francis, what are some misconceptions a lot of Catholics have of Thomas? Well, one that he was really fat, you know, now he is described as fat. Well, pingus is the word that is used of him in Latin, which means fat.

But fat in the 13th century is not obese in the 21st century. It's not Walmart fat. 13th century is not obese in the 21st century. He was really tall and he was big and I think, you know, probably also somewhat fat. But I mean, keep in mind, this man walked most places and made the trip from like Rome to Paris, I don't know, something like 15 times on foot. So it's hard to imagine that he was really- A couch potato. Yeah, exactly.

What are some quotes attributed to him that aren't true? I've got one. Okay. It's in regards to the fifth remedy for happiness. I've heard people say, a bath, sleep in a glass of red wine. That's often said. He never talks about the glass of red wine.

Yeah, I think that's right. What else is there? Sometimes people attribute this to him, I don't know if it's true, to the one who believes no explanation is necessary. Is that true? I don't think so. Yeah, I don't think that's from Aquinas.

This is the thing. Whenever a quote is attributed to Aquinas, whenever it sounds cute, I just think that's not true. It's probably not true. Well, there are places you can go to, like there's a website called Corpus Thomiscum, which has like a list of Aquinas's authentic works. Now, it's gonna be in Latin, so you know, you're gonna have to know. Yeah, but there are a lot of things that have been ascribed to Aquinas through the years that were spurious, like not actually by him, by someone else.

But that's maybe not so interesting to people. Some of the prayers attributed to Aquinas were probably not written by him, although a lot of them are pretty close to things that he would have said. So I don't think it's bad to pray them. I mean, they're good prayers. But there are some things that, you know, it's wonderful. He did write, like, he wrote the Divine Office and all the hymns for Corpus Christi and all the prayers that the church still uses. He wrote the Adorote Devote, which is really

beautiful. Actually, maybe you know this story, but I don't know if your viewers know the Adorote Devote prayer or hymn, but the recent research on that is really interesting. So, every day, Aquinas would celebrate Mass early in the morning, and his socius Reginald would serve. And then they would switch, and his socius would celebrate Mass, and Aquinas would serve. So every day he did two Masses, one as the priest and one as the server, and he would stay and pray at the end of the second Mass, like adoring the Lord in the Eucharist and kind of meditating on the Eucharistic presence of Christ. So it seems that he wrote the Adorote Devote as a prayer that he would memorize and say

silently when the other priest was celebrating mass at the elevation of the host and the chalice. So it's really interesting. It wasn't originally a hymn. It was a prayer that Aquinas made for going to Mass. Because remember, Mass at that time would have been like the priest is saying the Eucharistic prayer in silence. Adorote... Adorote, devote,

latens deitas is the way it normally is given, although probably the original was latens veritas, so devoutly I adore you, truth in hiding. Yeah, I'm plugging it into Truthly, which is a great app which you should download. Adorote Devote is a beautiful Eucharistic hymn attributed to St. Thomas Aquinas. It expresses profound reverence to the devotion of Jesus Christ and the Holy Eucharist. The hymn reflects deep theological yada yada yada. Cool. It's a beautiful, it's a beautiful poem. I mean basically it's a prayer and it's a

prayer to Jesus in the Eucharist. And what's interesting is it's a prayer to Jesus in the Eucharist under the forms of both bread and wine, so both host and chalice, which is a good reason to think that it's what he would say at the elevation. Yeah. Because there's no other time when you'd be able to adore both, like adore the chalice. Yeah, I love that there's seven stanzas. Like, that's not a short thing to pray. No. No, but I have started, ever since I did this research on that prayer, I keep a copy at my place in the chapel. So after Mass, I like to say that prayer every day. And that is, it is a great prayer. I really encourage people to pray that prayer.

Do you know it off by heart? I know like the first three or four. I get the card out. What does, what's this idea, the sixth stanza, Lord Jesus, good pelican, wash my filthiness and cleanse me with your blood. Where did that myth, that's my understanding, of the pelican come from? So it's a Eucharistic, like it's part of the Eucharistic imagery that you often find a pelican like on the front of altars and stuff like that. The idea was that the pelican, the mythological idea, which is not true in fact, is that the

pelican would feed its young by pricking its own breast, and the chicks or whatever the young pelicans would eat, the blood coming from the adult pelican's chest. And in fact, what's happening there is the pelican has reddish feathers underneath. The underneath of its chest is reddish, so it fluffs the feathers and it looks red,

which is why this idea came out, that it was like pricking its breast. But anyway, the point is it's like feeding us with blood. It's flesh and blood, okay. Yeah, it's really, really beautiful. Real quick, so there's an app called Truthly. It's based on OpenAI, but we've put hundreds of pages of instructions into it to make it Catholic.

Give me a question that you would be surprised it answered correctly. That might be a lot to put you on the spot. A question that I'd be surprised if it answered correctly. Correctly, yeah, yeah, like some kind of theological question. And when you're ready, I'll put it on voice to text. Yeah, so I would... Let me think of theological question. And when you're ready, I'll put it on voice to text. Yeah, so I would, let me think of a question. What, does Aquinas talk about whether Jesus prays to the Father? All right, let's see. Okay, give me one sec here. does Aquinas talk about Jesus praying to the Father? Is that what you want to say?

praying Yes, St. Thomas Aquinas addresses the topic of Jesus praying to the Father in several parts of his work Especially in the Summa Theologiae Aquinas delves into the mystery of Christ's human and divine nature is illustrating how prayer fits into this understanding Aquinas affirms that Jesus in his human nature prayed to the Father, demonstrating His communion with Him and providing an example for us. His human will, Christ shows perfect obedience and submission to the Father's will. This act of prayer illustrates the relational aspect of the Trinity where, though equal in divinity, the Son communicates with the Father. Furthermore, Aquinas emphasizes that Christ's prayer was an expression of His human nature, communicating with God, setting an example for believers in how to live in constant union with God. Jesus' prayers in the gospel show

how his reliance on the Father and his intercessory role on behalf of all humanity." It goes on. Is any of that true? That sounds pretty good. Yeah, that sounds right. It's going to put me out of business. Well, that's good. I'm glad to hear. Not that you're out of business. I mean, it can't give me the Eucharist so you should be fine All right. Let's take some questions from our local supporters Locals, where are you? Here we go Agile elephant says still would like to better understand the Dominican charism, especially as it relates to lay people

I am interested in the spiritual plan life of that lay Dominicans follow on a daily basis What are their daily spiritual practices? How does the Dominican emphasize or Dominican emphasis on learning pour into these daily practices? Yeah, I would answer, I mean, well, here's a little secret about the Thomistic Institute. We are trying to make the Dominican life a little more accessible to, like, people on campuses. And, you know, part of that is study and part of that is prayer. I mean, really, it amounts to prayer, common life, and study. You know, those are the pillars of our life. So, if you can find a way to integrate those into your life, you know, you're already sharing a little bit in the rhythm of the Dominican life. The Benedictines would say, like, the Benedictine rhythm is regulated by

aura et labora, prayer and labor or manual work. Dominicans turned that into, like, prayer and study. So, study is actually, like, one of the religious observances. So, that's why, you know, raising your mind to God, it's supposed to be sacred study, study that allows you to raise your mind to God. So integrating that into your life, like that's the best place to start and there's no reason we can't all do that.

Will Green says, what's a good way to differentiate between being a Thomist versus personalist and how is that different from just being Catholic relativism? So what's your thought as a Thomist on personalism? Yeah, okay, so this was like a debate in the 20th century where you had certain people, they're very Thomistic often, but they called themselves like Jacques Maritain would be a famous example.

Jacques Maritain is like a well-known Thomist, but styled himself as a part of a movement that came to be known as personalist. And this is mostly with respect to like certain questions about the common good or about political life, where after World War II, Jacques Maritain is trying to ground like a public understanding of like human

rights. So the Universal Declaration of Human Rights at the United Nations, Maritain was a part of that, and he wants to ground it in personal dignity. So the dignity of the individual rational being. So he's like a Thomist who's trying to say, yeah, the grounding for these rights is the dignity of the person, okay, hence personalism. And then there were some Thomists, some other, like, friends, basically, and very similar on a lot of, in a lot of ways, who criticized that position, so the most famous would be, his name is DeConnick, who is a

Canadian writer, and criticized Maritan for overemphasizing the individual person and therefore having a harder time to account for the height of the common good. So that was a debate that happened in the middle of the 20 good. So that was a debate that happened in the middle of the 20th century, and one of our Dominicans at the Dominican National Studies, Father Aquinas Gilbo, wrote a very interesting doctoral dissertation on precisely this debate. Jason L. says, is there a way to reconcile virtue ethics with duty ethics? Is there a way to reconcile virtue ethics with duty ethics? Well, it depends on what you mean by duty ethics.

So I think, yes, you can understand what your duties are in a virtue ethics system, but generally speaking, a system that is focused on duties is going to understand, like, why should you do this because it's your duty, because there's some moral obligation to do it. Whereas a virtue ethic approach is trying to say, well, you have a duty to do it because it is orienting you to the good and orienting you ultimately to flourishing and happiness. And the virtues are the path towards that. So you can reframe that in a to your duties, like you should be virtuous, for example, or you should obey the law. But a duty ethic tends to be focused more on moral obligation, whereas the virtue ethic

tends to be focused more on happiness and flourishing and virtue as a path to that. I mean, Aquinas is classically in the zone of virtue ethics, although he does account for moral duties. But if you go with, say, Immanuel Kant, you don't really have a robust account of the virtue ethic in the same way. It's much more focused on the obligations, you know, the duty to obey the categorical imperative, for example. Jordan says, what advice do you give to parents teaching their children to pray? Well, I think the first thing is to give a good example, you know. I think it's one thing to teach someone, it's another thing to let yourself be seen doing it. I mean, for myself, I think back on my childhood and the example of my father, and I think especially, you know, fathers are a powerful

example for children in this way. You know, my father going into church and kneeling down before God and praying in silence, that's very powerful because, you know, like your dad is a big, important, strong figure, and here he is on his knees before God and then telling me that I need to be on my knees. I mean, I have a very vivid memory of a point. I must have been, it was after my first communion, and we, you know, had gone up to receive Holy Communion, came back to our places, our pew, and I, you know, knelt down, but I rested my rear end on the seat, you know? So I was only kind of kneeling. And my dad did not get angry with me that often, but he, you know, you knew when he

was angry. He would get quiet when he got angry. And he leaned over and said quietly, but with real intensity, you will kneel straight up and down until the priest sits back in his chair. And I was like, okay, this is important, you know, like very important. So I think giving that kind of example, I mean, obviously, you want to teach your kids the basic prayers at an early age, the Our Father, the Hail Mary, those are really the Glory Bee, like, teaching them that they should go to God with small requests as well as big, you know, I think

that's really important. Making it a part of your family rhythm, you know, so that there are certain times during the day when you do pray together, that's really important. But letting them see you pray on your knees, that's also really good. I agree with that. I'm really trying, we pray the rosary every night and it's been so beautiful for strictly human reasons. It just calms everybody down. We just light candles and we just pray the rosary and I'm not terribly upset if people aren't super into it

or if one's falling asleep, whatever, they can fall asleep or So it's quite casual, but it's beautiful and I'm really trying to kneel every time Sometimes I'll just kneel at the last one because maybe I'm lazy, but I agree with you There's something really powerful about seeing your father on their knees. Yeah Good. All right Another thought about prayer. I think it's just so important that we also rejoice in the miracles that actually might be taking place in our life and the lives of our friends.

And just like the psalmist talks about, like recalling these powerful works of God, we should do that in our own family. So, I won't say which daughter, just to kind of hide, protect her a little, but she went to confession, and she, after the priest, this was a Byzantine priest, laid his stole over her, everything went white in her vision.

And so the stole was removed, and she looked around, wondering why she couldn't see. And then the whiteness kind of faded back into reality after a while. And what a beautiful, powerful, wonderful thing that was. And in fact, when she told me that, and she's not at all the kind of child who would make something up, I, we recorded it. And these are beautiful things, I think, to remind the children. Or when a friend had a cancer seem to be cured or something like that. I think these are important things, right?

Christ and Christianity is not just merely a valid syllogism or a sound syllogism. It's a person, and he's at work in the world today, and we should expect his action, yeah? Yeah. I mean, can I tell you a story about this, which I won't name who it was, but a good friend of mine, this was before I was a Dominican, the two of us made a pilgrimage. It was actually more than two of us, but the two of us were together, made a pilgrimage to Rome. It was in the Jubilee year of 2000. And I had just, like I'd been returning to the faith and taking it more seriously, and this priest had told me, yeah, you know, you can ask St. Anthony to find you a parking place. And so I tried it, you know, just before we went to Rome and it worked. You know, I got a parking place like right in front of the place I was going. So we're walking around Rome and I was telling this story to the group,

you know, that we're walking around with. And this buddy of mine says, you know, listen, I believe in the saints, but I mean, that's ridiculous. Like they have better things to do than to get me a parking place. And like, he was just like dismissive of the idea. So then for the rest of the day, you know, he was saying like, hey, you know, I want a gelato. Tell St. Anthony that, you know, that he needs to get me a gelato and kind of making fun of it. Okay. So the next morning he came down to breakfast and I had known him for a long time and he, we had talked many times about the fact that like he wouldn't remember his dreams and he was always kind of jealous of people who'd remember their dreams. So he came down to breakfast and he said, you will not believe what happened to me.

I had a dream last night, and in my dream, St. Anthony came up to me, and it wasn't like a dream, it was like he was really there. And he said to me, the saints are your friends in heaven, and we love to do good things for you. So if you ask me, I will even get you a parking place." And this was like a real change in my friend's life. But I love that story because, you know, I really think, well, this is another friend of mine once said to me, you know, I ask God for the big things, but I'm not going to bother

him with the small things. And I think that's actually exactly the wrong approach because with a friend, you do not only call your friend when you need help moving out of your apartment, like that's a big ask. You develop a friendship by asking each other for small favors. And like that's a sign of friendship that you ask somebody for a small favor.

You're like, hey, can you just pick something up for me? You know, whatever. Yeah. Actually, I'm honored by it. Yeah, no, that's right. When people ask me to do things, because I want to bless them. That's right. So, I think our relationship with God and with the saints is very much the same, and that He wants us to ask Him for small things. Now, big things too, of course, but small things. And so so it's right to ask God for all the little things, which might be trivial little things like a parking place,

or even something smaller. Like, you want little helps, but that's part of the point. Rely on God more and more, and he will show you that he is hearing you and present and helping you. And that's like how you live your life, like with God, more and more profoundly. Yeah, I'm thinking of 1 Peter 5-7. Peter doesn't say, cast only your serious anxieties upon Him. He says, cast all of them. And maybe one of the reasons your advice is going to be so helpful to people is because we're meant to live in constant communion with the Lord. I'm thinking of that, speaking of Carmelite's brother Lawrence, about that ongoing conversation. And if I'm only bringing the big things to him, then maybe I'm

doing it once a week or once every three days or every two weeks, but if I can bring everything to him, then it's going to be an ongoing thing. Can I throw out one of my other favorite things that Aquinas says about prayer? I mean, Aquinas has a long treatment on prayer, but one of the things that he says, which people don't think about enough, you should pray especially for yourself. So, yes, pray for other people, but you should pray for yourself. And he has a theological reason why. When you pray for someone else, you're asking God to bless them with a grace, but you cannot dispose them to be ready to receive it. And they may have some obstacle that prevents them from getting it. But when you pray for yourself,

you are removing the obstacle to receiving in the act of prayer. So he thinks it's really important for us to pray for things for ourselves, because we're then like the main thing that we're doing in prayer is like actually turning ourselves to God and being ready to receive whatever he wants to give us. That's amazing because I have a distinct memory of someone telling me they never pray for themselves as if this was an act of virtue or something. So that's good. I got a question for you that's been, that I know a lot of people have. You know, the Protestant will say, listen, how this idea that Mary hears our prayers, even if I

was open to that, the idea that she, like how many people right now are praying the rosary around the world? It's a, is she omniscient? Is that the idea? And if she's not, how is it that she can be personally attentive to multiple people at once? What's your answer? Yeah, good question. I mean, Mary's a creature. She's finite, so she's not... she doesn't have the infinity of God's intellect, so God doesn't have that problem, but a creature is going to be limited, but Mary is existing in heaven, so outside of time in some sense, and is living in God, and so our communion with her is, as it were, through God, you know,

like it's our communion with all the saints is insofar as we are in communion with God and they are in communion with God, we're in communion with them. So, I mean, is it impossible for God to allow a creature to somehow participate in the prayers that are, you know, that are being sent up asking for her help? I don't think that's impossible. And in fact, the number of prayers that are being sent up is not, in fact, infinite, right? It's also it's a large number, but it's not infinite. So it's not impossible for God to grant that to her, and I think that's the way I would analyze it. I think that's good. I think there's a big difference between you and I now and the infinite God. It's actually infinite. So presumably in our glorified state in heaven,

in her glorified body, she's gonna look more impressive than Superman would to us. Or whatever, like there's a big gap between us and God. And so it shouldn't maybe surprise us if the, when the answer is mysterious, that shouldn't be seen as a cop-out necessarily, because we have not, we don't yet know what we'll become. I'm sorry, I'm stumbling. Well, I think also, you know, it's just a fact of Christian experience in faith, and now maybe

some people haven't experienced that and they're skeptical about it, but, you know, I do certainly feel like the Blessed Virgin Mary has, like, answered prayers that I've, you know, asked her. Like, she's helped me. She's obtained graces. Now, she isn't herself the source of grace, but she is someone who intercedes for us. We ask her to pray for us, and, you know, she is very close to the Lord. So, she has, like, a maternal love for everyone, and isn't this also what Jesus himself says from the cross? You know, he gives his beloved disciple, his mother, to be his mother, to be the disciple's mother, and that's, you know, the church's tradition that Jesus is

giving to the church, Mary, to be our mother. And I think, you know, we experience that maternal love and concern, and we have to conclude, yeah, okay, well, somehow it works. Yeah. It's interesting that Aquinas doesn't make that connection in his commentary on John's gospel. I went to it hoping that he would, and he doesn't. And I don't know if that's because he had a limited selection of the Church Fathers to work with or what. Yeah, I mean, there are sometimes things that Aquinas doesn't say that we would like him

to have said. Sure. Yeah, he doesn't have to say everything. Grant asks, what is St. Thomas' view on the unforgivable sin and does it differ from what is taught in any way? I don't know what they mean by that last bit, but what does he say the unforgivable sin is? When Aquinas talks about that, he says it's blaspheming against the Holy Spirit, and my recollection of Aquinas's treatment of that is to effectively say that God cannot forgive these sins, or that the Holy Spirit is not sanctifying, and that this, like, if you turn definitively against the possibility that God can forgive,

then you're stuck. I am going to ask truthfully what it says. What does Thomas Aquinas say is the unforgivable sin? Alright, check it out. My gosh, this is incredible. For Aquinas, blasphemy against the Holy Spirit involves a persistent state of unrepentance. It is not that God cannot or will not forgive, but that the individual closes themselves off to the very means by which forgiveness is received, repentance and openness to the transforming power of the Holy Spirit."

Yeah, that sounds pretty good. Why are you more cool than Father Gregory Pine, Mike Franks wants to know. I dispute the premise of the question. I'm not more cool. That's like self-evident, don't you think? R. W. Rush says, for a Protestant who hasn't read any of his literature, summarize his Summa Theologiae in three sentences and why it's important for Christians. R. Three sentences, okay. I don't know if I can count the sentences. You don't have to do three, just quickly, I think it means it.

R. What I will do is say, like, everything God is, everything comes from God and returns to God, and this is also what Christianity is all about. The Father sent the Son into the world to save us from sin and gives us the Holy Spirit so that we can be adopted sons and daughters of the Father. And I have a good answer to that fella and to this next one, Brett, who says, do you have any tips on reading the Sumer and making it more understandable as a layman? And here's the answer, Aquinas101.com. Exactly. Laurels of Dante. Was Dante, where's he from? Not Rome, he's from... Florence. Florence, I was just there, saw that beautiful statue in the...

So that beautiful statue in the... Anyway, Laura's of Dante says, Ah, all Dominicans by default Thomists. I attended Dominican parish in Houston, and I love the friars dearly. Asking because sometimes I feel Thomism can run the risk of being too rational. I don't think anything can run the risk of being too rational,

but missing the mystery and wonder of the faith. Your take. Well, I think... So the original one was, Ah, the mystery and wonder of the faith. Your take. Well, I think... So the original one was, are all Dominicans by default thermists? Yeah. I mean, if you turn the faith into just like a set of rational proofs, then you've lost something. So that, and Aquinas himself says that. So, I mean, not maybe in exactly those words, but that's a very important theme in Aquinas. So, the mystery of God is above what reason can comprehend, but reason is able to get to some part of it. So, we don't want to throw

reason out. We want to use all the power of our mind to understand God, but God is still going to be beyond anything we can come up with first by human reason and then even by divine revelation. You know, God is lightening our eyes, the eyes of our mind with the light of faith, but we still don't see God as He is until we get to heaven in the beatific vision. So there's always going to be an element of mystery, and Aquinas has a beautiful account of it. I don't think that there's any danger that if you're too Thomist, you lose the sense of mystery.

Because that is often an objection I hear from our Eastern Orthodox brethren, but to that you would say… Yeah, I just think that they don't know Aquinas and they just read a little more and you'll discover it. I mean, Aquinas has amazing things to say about sort of knowing the unknown God. You know, so when you say that God is He who is or is, God is in an absolute way, and that no, like, He doesn't have a body, He doesn't have, there's no created form. He is something that our minds cannot directly encounter from our own power. You know, he has to enlighten our minds

and raise us up to him. So there's always going to be something, you know, we're able to know from the world, we're able to know that God exists because he's the cause of the world, but we cannot know what he is. And in this life, Aquinas says, you can never know what God is.

And that is exactly to enter into this mystery, youinas says you can never know what God is, and that is exactly to enter into this mystery, you know, the mystery of the living God. Right, we know from effect to cause, not from cause to effect. What about the via negativa? Can you talk more about that? Yeah, the via negativa is just like, it's kind of like, you know, playing a party game where it's like, you know, questions like, you can only ask me yes or no questions to try and figure out what It's like playing a party game where it's like questions, like you can only ask me yes or no questions to try and figure out what I'm thinking. So you might say, is it a,

are you thinking of a vegetable or a mineral or an animal? And I, like, is it a vegetable? And I say, no, is it a mineral? No, and then you know it's gotta be an animal, for example. And then you say, is it a lion? And I say, no, and you're like, you're narrowing down what it is, is it a mammal? You know, yes, okay, you're narrowing the scope.

The point is that we can negate what God is not, but we will never be able to state positively what he is. What if he just said he's the uncreated creator? Is that not what God is? Yes, but now, I mean, you can reformulate that in negative terms, like the uncreated, okay, what is, well, that's a negation, right? And creator is what he does. Creator, well, creator is like the, you know, we're saying he's not a creature. He's the source of creation. I mean, Aquinas does think that you can, so you can go the via negativa or the way of, he calls it the way of removal, the via remozionis.

So you're removing things and what you're left with, you know, is like not defined, but what you've done is remove all these lower things. You're purifying your understanding. But then there's the way of super eminence, and that's where you affirm any creaturely perfection, like God is good, and then you say, well, he's good, but he's not good the way a creature is good. He's infinitely surpassing the goodness of any creature. Or God is just, but he's infinitely more just than any creature. So there's, you can, you can go that way too.

Yep. As we wrap up, tell us about this study abroad program you all have in Rome. So we created this a few years ago. We send college undergraduates over to Rome to do a study abroad semester in the spring semester with the Dominicans at the Angelicum, which is the Dominican University in Rome. And it's an awesome program. I've been… I think it's probably one of the most high-impact things that we do with college students. And, you know, so you live in community with a group of other students. They live at the Pontifical Irish College, so it's an English-speaking environment. You walk through the center of classical Rome, past the Coliseum every day, and past the Roman Forum, and the Angelicum is on the hill just above. The classroom, the

Angelicum classroom that we have our classes in is so amazing. It's got one of the best views in the city of Rome. So it's an absolutely extraordinary program. I'm really proud of it. It's, you know, I think the students who go on it have their lives changed because they're living in the city of martyrs and apostles. They're studying Aquinas, and they're living a real Christian life together in a way that, like, we really want it to be a virtuous Christian program. So it's magnificent. So I hope that some of your viewers will check it out. How do they learn more about it? You can go to our website, ThomisticInstitute.org, and look for the

study abroad drop-down and you'll find all the details. So students studying at any university wherever could come for a semester? That's right, yep. So you get credits from the Angelicum, which is a accredited Roman university. And we have an agreement with them to like adjust the credits to American credit hours so that your home institution gets a transcript of transfer credits basically in American credit hours. And if people are watching from all over the world,

so is this open to them too or just Americans? Yes, it is. We've had are watching from all over the world, so is this open to them too or just Americans? Yes, it is. We've had some students from other countries as well, but it's calibrated to the American university system. So, I mean, it really is tailored a little more for Americans, but we certainly have had, we've had a couple of students from Mexico. Why did you point to me when you said that?

You know I'm from Australia, right? I do know that, yeah. But, you know, we welcome Australians as well. We've had some people from Mexico! Good. All right, thank you. Awesome, thanks Matt. Good.